[dramatic instrumental music]
- In the world of Spyre
did prophecy foretell
that the dragon Kalvaxus would
rise to power when once more
were seven maidens chained
at the mouth of his cave.
What the prophecy could not predict
was what The Seven had
in store for the world.
United by prophecy, bound by
friendship, the Seven Maidens
would quickly become one
of Spyre's premier parties
of teen heroes and all-star students
at the Aguefort Adventuring Academy.
Y'all wanna play some D&D?
[players cheering]
Hello one and all!
And welcome back to
another thrilling episode
of "Dimension 20: The Seven."
I'm your humble dungeon
master Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me as always are our
Heroic High Schoolers.
Say hi, Heroic High Schoolers.
- [Players] Hi, Heroic High Schoolers!
- Oh, holy smokes, g*ng.
Last we left off, our
Heroic High Schoolers
were aboard the Rombosa, having hijacked,
commandeered,
seized-
- Borrowed!
- [Brennan] Borrowed.
- Are we giving it back?
No, we're keeping it, what's a new name?
- [Becca] Long-term borrowed.
- It's called the Maiden Voyage.
- [Persephone] The Maiden Voyage.
- Look man, everything's just borrowed.
[Brennan laughing]
- Where did they get it?
They took the materials from the Earth.
- There you go, exactly, exactly.
- [Persephone] Exactly.
- Aboard the Maiden Voyage
headed to the Nekronomikron
after an incredible combat,
defeating Charity Blythe,
k*lling not only Preston
but also Jana Cleaver
and rescinding the m*rder
of Tectonya Karkovnya
and bringing her back to life,
our wonderful Heroic High
Schoolers saved the day.
And then got, you know,
individually either extremely
plastered or partied
or danced with a bunch
of horses or hooked up.
- High five.
- [Brennan] Congrats.
- Or got really sad.
- Or got very, very sad
[Rekha cheers]
on a balcony.
[Persephone cheers]
- It always happens at a party, though.
- [Players] Yeah.
- And I will say, too, that
however you awaken that morning
we know where and how some folks awaken.
For the rest, Ostentatia
and Katja got very drunk.
Danielle, with this new vine tower placed,
every person at the party is
so happy to spend the night
just dancing, speaking, talking with you.
And many of the nobles
of the Baronies based,
sort of troubling 'cause
it should be based
on your incredible prowess in combat,
but they're honestly still talking
about that entrance to the ball primarily.
And you end up having the
ear of a lot of these nobles
in the Baronies for that eve.
- Get on their boards.
- [Brennan] Get on their boards.
- Danielle's dream.
- This is how change happens.
- Destroy them from the inside out.
- Yes!
- The following morning
on a balcony overlooking
endless gray expanses of
clouds from a great height,
you can look out and understand
from this weather pattern
that the landscape under these clouds
is choked in a permanent murky grayness
as you approach the Nekronomikron.
But from up here, the sun is shining.
There are some high little
wisps of stratus cloud,
and beneath you the
weather is gray and dark,
but up here the sky is still blue.
And on a balcony, a table
appointed with fresh fruit
and bacon and wonderful
cheeses and various
sausage links
and other things like that.
Some breakfast wine, some
sparkling breakfast wine.
Breakfast wine being a
mainstay of the Baronies.
- A staple.
- Yeah.
- Yep, gotta have it.
- Brunch g*ng.
And seated at the table,
a fine mahogany bench
helping herself as you all
arrive there for breakfast
is Tectonya Karkovnya.
- Ah.
- Who smiles at you all and
says, "Welcome, welcome.
I trust that your evenings were pleasant."
- Don't, oh, you, mm, you know things.
Is this bench taken, can we?
- Oh, for sure, it was intended for you.
I would feel a fool to sit
at a massive banquet table
by myself and abjure any possible friends
from joining my company at
such a well-laden table.
- Can I just say, you called us friends,
but I look up to you so much
after I heard about your research.
- I wanted to k*ll you at
first, and then I got confused.
I started out confused
'cause I didn't know
if you were sorta good or bad.
- Isn't that a question
we all ask ourselves.
- No, but in a much more specific way
'cause she might have been-
- Oh, an immediate threat.
- Yeah, might have been.
- Yeah.
- Which I think they
were a little confused,
but you know what?
We all sorted it out.
Everything's chill and groovy, baby.
- Except I think you
did hook up with my dad,
and I feel a weird way about that,
but I don't ever want to talk about it.
- Got an opening for moms!
[group laughing]
Is that a weird thing to say?
- [Aabria] I don't know.
- Yeah, Katja did m*rder
her mother last night.
- Yep.
- I saw that.
Well, or sorry, no, I didn't see that,
but I heard about it later.
I didn't see because I was dead.
- You were dead.
- You were dead, yep.
- By the way, I didn't get a chance-
- Your welcome, your welcome.
- Thank you so much.
- Of course.
- I feel like we have to talk to you.
- You see Tectonya looks
over at you addressing her
off that last point.
"Oh, yes, your father.
I know that you've asked
me not to speak of it.
I will not speak of our sexual exploits."
- Disgusting, ew, ew.
- Okay, but maybe later.
- Just call it making love, God. [laughs]
- I mean, I'm kind of curious, how was he?
- Oh God, no. [laughs]
- He's hot, okay.
- [Aabria] No, but do answer.
- Not in front of Katja.
- [Erika] Block your ears.
- Cinnamon puts her paw.
- Her paws?
- Her hooves.
Cinnamon's at the table, of course.
Over my ears, you can talk.
- [Becca] Okay, now you can say it.
- Cinnamon also would like to know.
- Karl is a...
[Becca laughing]
Very tactical lover.
[Erika laughing]
- What does that mean?
- He made a battle map of my body.
- Can you do that?
- Yes, it is an interesting
juxtaposition of elements
in the passionate throes
of lovemaking to know
that you are being appraised
by a master strategist
and that these various
maneuvers are being utilized.
- I like how different.
Like, I don't know two people
who talk more different
than I think Tectonya and Karl.
- Yes, his booming voice is alarming
and yet those powerful
lungs do come in handy.
[players gasping]
- Are you in love?
Why do you-
- Does he fill you with air?
- How are you still talking?
- Wow, a man that can hold his
breath, that sounds helpful.
- Okay, I have a question.
- That sounds like the opposite
of my experience with Lysander.
- I have a question.
[Brennan laughs]
Katja, you can listen, did you hear that?
- Were you hearing the whole time?
- No, Cinnamon.
[players laughing]
- It echoed and made it louder.
- So why, what's been going on with you?
- A fantastic question.
- You were marked for
death, did you know that?
- Yes.
- For taking the Legendarium.
- Oh.
- Marked for death, gone for 12 years.
- Well, probably not just for that, but...
- Well, my dear Ms. Nightingale,
I think the cart and the
horse are somewhat rearranged.
I took the Legendarium.
- [Isabella] I know that-
- Ssh.
[group laughing]
- Cinnamon looks up with a
mouthful of apples and goes,
[spits] "Never!"
[players laughing]
- Also a little triggering
considering our friend Preston.
- Oh, yes indeed.
The Legendarium was something that I took
after I was marked for death.
- Oh.
- The Ministry of Adventure was created
I think a little over 100 years ago,
but certainly under the
guidance and leadership
of one Charity Blythe,
[Becca gasps]
I became aware through
some help and funding
provided to me by one of my
great allies, Karl Cleaver.
- Just say making love.
[Becca laughs]
- That's actually not sexual.
He just sincerely was a huge help.
- Ugh, disgusting, you
keep talking about it.
- Helpful, what kind of terminology?
- She turns and says, "I
discovered the machinations
of a governmental operation
known as Project Reset."
[players gasp]
- Project Reset?
- Ms. Blythe became
tasked with the leadership
of the Ministry of Adventure
a little bit over 12 years ago
when she assumed the title of director.
And you are aware that the
Ministry of Adventure's role
is to support the large and
thriving adventuring community
within the nation of
Solace and to interface
with other nations whom interact
with our nation's adventurers
for better or for worse.
Ms. Blythe
[soft instrumental music]
in taking over command of the ministry.
- Narc stuff, made it narc stuff.
- Saw fit to optimize for what she saw
as the mission of the Ministry.
In past incarnations the
Ministry of Adventure
was there as a support for
adventurers and also an agency
to hold adventurers
accountable when need be.
Not necessarily an
altogether evil ambition
given the incredible power
wielded by some adventurers
and their propensity
to avoid accountability
when and where possible.
- We never do that.
- Defund the Ministry of Adventures!
Now I'm with you!
- [Persephone] Yeah!
- I get it now.
- But it wasn't always bad, right?
Like, my whole family is
kinda real deep in that sauce.
- She looks at you and says,
"Institutions on the scale
of nations have outsized
impact, and at any given moment
the Ministry can be engaged
in any number of endeavors
which are blind to one another.
It is not my understanding
that the entire Ministry
of Adventure is even
cognizant of Project Reset
let alone in favor of it.
However, I would say
that these are the issues
that come around whenever any system
becomes this large and unwieldy.
Perhaps we should all meld our
consciousness into one mind
and exist as sort of an orb.
That would be one idea."
- See, thank you!
- You sound like Danielle.
- Yeah, a little bit, but, um...
- But what I would say is this.
Certainly the Ministry has
taken a rather harmful turn
in the last, a little
bit more than 12 years
because as we can understand,
the Ministry are indeed narcs,
but also adventurers,
being atomized and cellular
and accountable to no
one and from time to time
incredibly powerful also being
able to do whatever they like
isn't not narcs in its
own way sometimes so-
- [Aabria] I don't feel good.
- It could be internal affairs
if we, this is complicated.
- Here's the thing is that,
yes, any body that's created
to uphold a status quo
is going to inherently
be rife with problems,
but adventuring by and large is unethical.
- Whoa.
- Because it's a group
of people going into
someplace where they are not,
they have no stake in
helping the people there.
- Oh my f*cking God.
- [Erika] They come in
the village and leave-
- Oh.
- Then why do you do it, Yelle?
- What's wrong with us?
- Because I don't know how to
do anything else, honestly.
How else do you make a
change on an institutional
and fundamental level if
not just one chip at a time?
And the things that we do, it's great.
We help our local community.
We don't go into other areas,
k*ll dragons and take the loot,
flood the local economy with gold
and destandardize their currency.
- Oh sh*t, yeah.
- Like, that's the thing
that you gotta think about
as an adventurer, and you guys,
there's gotta be somebody to oversee that.
- So what you're saying is
the system needs a makeover.
- [gasps] Oh my God.
- It needs to be brushed.
- Do you like that or no?
- I do!
- Okay.
- You see Tectonya
holds a hand out to Ostentatia
and Danielle and says,
"One of the things that was
suggested to the Ministry
by myself in ages long past
was that accountability
for our adventurers be moved
from a inter-Solesian governmental agency
to the actual communities
affected by the adventurers
and to change our extradition
laws such that if adventurers
were to cause harm in other communities
that the nation of Solace
would help those communities
hold those adventurers accountable.
This was categorically ruled
out by, amongst other people,
a young Charity Blythe.
[Isabella gasps]
- And it's because they just,
they don't want them
to be held accountable
but they also want to make sure
that their interests are...
- [Becca] They want power.
- It's as we've said, very complicated.
Adventurers and also, once again,
adventurers are not an institution.
They are cellular, atomized individuals,
some evil, some good, running amok.
In that way, there are
less problematic elements
of adventurers because they do
not wield institutional power
but they do wield
tremendous individual power.
A solution was needed or thought
to be needed at the time.
It resulted in the Ministry.
The Ministry became bad.
The goal as always is to
solve all the world's problems
without ever doing
anything wrong yourself.
Good luck doing that.
- Yeah.
- Adventurers should unionize.
[Becca gasps]
- Now, an adventurers'
union, it's a brilliant idea.
- My dad was his local's rep
and he can help us.
- You see she says, "Incredible.
That is the exact sort
of change that is needed.
I think you would be well
served in pursuing that.
Also know that it will mark
you for death by the Ministry.
Charity hates that sh*t."
- Well, we're gonna k*ll her.
- Charity's going to die.
- She was so close to death.
- To return, Project Reset was in a world
in which the Ministry of
Adventure saw not the safekeeping
of Spyre and its denizens
but rather the promotion
of a very critical adventuring industry,
Project Reset came about as a means of
finding methods
to promote more adventure.
The Legendarium Extrordia
was created for this,
and there was an idea
to seek after Eidolons
to use their power to craft
or create more adventure.
Now, I don't need to tell you
that if what you're trying to promote,
if the product you're selling is heroes
and that is your supply,
what is the demand that
heroes are a response to?
- You need to create problems.
- Oh no.
- You needed to create global disasters.
- This is awful.
- Do we tell her about...
- But there's only one
Imaginarium Extrordia,
[mumbles] what's it called?
- And Charity has it again.
- And Charity has it, right?
- But we have copies.
- [Erika] Wow.
- Oh, shush.
- You have-
- Of my book.
- Oh, can I read it?
- Yes.
- There are 200.
- There are 200.
It's called "The Babysitter Horse."
- Wait, you wrote "The
Babysitter Horse"? [laughs]
- Wait, wait, wait, wait, why
can't we, why can't we just?
- Fan fiction.
- Let's find out why
Charity thinks she needs
to have the only one.
- I don't know what she knows.
I kinda dipped out early last night.
I assumed we caught her up.
- We should tell her.
- One thing at a time.
- Well, I mean, it's kind of important.
- Okay, Charity thinks she
has the only one, right?
- Yes, which is not good if she has it.
- I jailbroke copies for us on our phones.
It's not a really big, it's fine.
- It's a huge deal!
- It's a big deal!
- It's awesome!
- That's so cool!
- There was like a cool logo.
- It was like watching a
human montage with no editing.
- [Persephone] It was beautiful.
- It was really cool.
It was like the best
movie you could ever watch
but happening in front of you.
- Like, forget the entrance.
Talk about that hacking job.
- [Erika] Roll in these
complements for a bit, that's nice.
- I also have something to confess to you.
Earlier when I told you that I had a book.
I don't have a book.
- [Erika] I think at this-
- You lied to me?
- I didn't mean to, I'm sorry.
- I forgive you.
- The important thing-
- Moms forgive.
- At this time we must
dispense with secrecy.
- [Aabria] Why is she sweating?
- And she does not have the only copy,
but she still believes herself to have it.
- Very well, may I?
I have not observed the
Legendarium in some time, may I?
- [Persephone] I toss the crystal.
- Uh, just to, uh, well,
there's a global-wide issue now.
- [Isabella] Oh, yeah.
- Because one of the Eidolons
has discovered that her sisters
have returned to the earth.
- This is all to the good.
There is a secret weakness
that Eidolons possess so-
- Ooh!
- What you must understand
is that-
- [Rekha] Candy.
- Eidolons' power waxes and wanes
according to the nature of their essence.
The Eidolons were at their
most powerful when the gods
of the outer planes
crafted the prime material.
As the gods began to
end the primary creation
of the material plane,
not much was being asked
of the Eidolons and their
power actually waned and waned
and waned enough that no
one was making use of them.
After a time the Eidolons
in their mortal forms became bored.
The grand expl*si*n of the
creation of all material things
had been such an investment
and as the gods asked
less and less of them
and there was less
divine will to manifest,
they began to become, for
lack of a better word, bored.
- Idle.
- [Brennan] Idle.
- [Players] Oh!
- [Isabella] Oh sh*t.
- Ostentatia, yes.
- Okay.
How did they get in the mirrors?
- Yeah, that's a good question.
- Thank you.
- Charity.
- [Brennan] An incredible question.
- I also want to let you know
that I'm sorry for thinking
this whole time while you've been talking
that I want to make jewelry out of you.
[Becca gasps]
- Would you?
- We'll talk later.
- You see that she says, "Yes, we will."
- She's gonna give you her nose!
[players laughing]
- I wish, I wish she could!
- [laughs] You see that she says,
"The gods moved into granting
miracles to their followers
and engaging in petty squabbles
as gods are wont to do,
so the Eidolons began to
move through the world
becoming befriended by,
falling in love with,
engaging in trysts with mortals."
- Ooh.
- And mortals began to realize
that it wasn't only divine will
that the Eidolons could manifest.
They could manifest mortal
will into extraordinary power.
- Oh.
- And the gods saw this as
being a tremendous problem.
[Persephone groans]
The gods of the lower planes,
the gods of evil and darkness
demanded that the Eidolons
be trapped and imprisoned forever.
And the gods of neutrality sided
with the gods of the lower planes.
- That doesn't sound very neutral.
- Can we get some names?
- Yeah, name names.
- Oh, the infinite number of
evil gods and neutral gods.
- I just need a few
just to make an example.
- Very well, I'll have
an assistant type one out
and send it to you.
- [Persephone] Thank you.
- Do you have people I
should get in touch with?
- Um, I have an agent.
- A what?
- Um...
- What?
- Nothing.
- An agent of darkness?
- Um...
- [Becca] Is this like a Kevin?
- A cleaning agent?
- You're making faces and noises
like you've said a secret.
- Yeah, we've seen a lot of that lately.
- What, wow, who?
- No, no, it's just,
it's just a small thing.
- [Erika] It's okay.
- [Isabella] Wait a minute.
- It's okay to have stuff going on.
- Is this for you singing?
- Acting.
- For acting?
- [Persephone] And singing, yeah.
- Hey, that came off judgy.
- When has she been an actor?
- When she was a child!
- [Erika] What?
- We don't know that.
- I watch a lot, I didn't
want to bring it up,
but it was like my favorite show.
- You've seen "Wave by Wave"?
- So many times.
- I've seen "Wave by Wave"!
- [Aabria] Wait, you
were on "Wave by Wave"?
- It's my stories!
[group laughing]
I watch all the soap operas.
- Yeah, Elliot Brine.
- Oh my God, okay.
- Wow.
- Wait, wait, so you
want to get back into it?
- Oh my God.
- I don't know.
- We are with a straight-up
celebrity right now.
- Oh my God, I did not
want this to happen.
- [Becca] I kept a secret!
[Isabella screams]
- Oh my God, Tectonya, I am so sorry.
- No this is huge, I loved "Wave by Wave."
- What, you watched?
You were gone!
- You watch TV?
- Where did you get TV?
- [Brennan] Oh, yes.
- In a freaking mountain.
- I don't know, it's a long day
of plumbing the depths of the cosmos.
And you get home and I just have my cat
and I just flop onto the sofa.
- [Players] Aw.
- You gotta turn your brain off.
- [Becca] I understand.
- Can you sign Cinnamon-
- You have to turn your brain off.
- I've never had a TV.
- Oh Danielle, you gotta get on it.
- [Aabria] You gotta
get on it, it's so fun.
- That's actually
helpful for me right now.
- [Becca] That's okay.
- Yeah, that's okay.
- Do you want to talk
about what that means then,
or do you want to save that for later?
- I don't know, the only
reason that I got in contact
with her was because we needed
information about Tectonya,
and I knew that my mother had
contacts all over the place
in Bastion City so I figured...
- Genasi women.
- [Persephone] She put me
in contact with Lola, yeah.
- Ooh, you can't say, they
don't all know each other.
Do you all know each other?
- No, we don't all know each
other, but we do have a group
dedicated to sort of lifting people up.
- [Persephone] I heard about that.
- [Aabria] Oh, that's cool, so that's fun.
- It's sort of a-
- I want to join.
- Oh, I would be so
happy to vouch for you.
- [Becca] I heard that it has a nice gym.
- I feel like the Half-Orc
community is too fractured.
I want that for myself,
but I think it's fractured.
- It's like when you're half
you don't quite know, like...
- I know!
- We can talk about it later, hon, yeah.
- But we can talk about it later.
- It's okay, but just so you know
you're valid and like...
- Can I be your stylist?
- If you have...
- Oh my God, I would love that,
but I don't know if I'm going
back, but you're so talented!
- You got time to consider, please.
- Okay, but the neutral gods sided-
[Isabella moans and pants]
- So the gods of the
good-aligned celestial planes
assented to this but
added a condition which is
that the mirrors that the
Eidolons would be trapped in
would have an out for the Eidolons
should they wish to leave.
They did not wish for the
Eidolons to be trapped forever,
and a very clever celestial god asked
if he could be the one
to craft these seven mirrors.
- Who?
- Logran Soulforger.
[Isabella screams]
- [Becca] No wonder he was so busy!
[Isabella burps and laughs]
[group laughing]
- Nice.
- [Persephone] Are you all right?
- Oh, we're good.
- I refill your glass
with that sparkling wine.
- Oh boy, she was real worked up.
- [Persephone] Sounded like you needed it.
- Logran Soulforger built the mirrors
with an escape for the Eidolons
and with the secret left
inside of the mirrors
so that they would not
ever truly be trapped.
However, the escape was,
in Logran's fashion,
a crucible of sorts, or if
you prefer, a chrysalis.
It required a forging, a transformation
so that when the Eidolons
departed the mirror,
as they could at any
time, their consciousness
would become as vast and
endless as they themselves were.
- Have you talked to him?
- Oh, he doesn't talk to anybody.
- What's his freaking deal?
- I'm gonna make a religion
check for Tectonya.
[die taps table]
That's a 17 on the die.
I think he's just very busy.
- With what?
[players laughing]
- I know that clerics of
your faith don't necessarily,
aren't given access to
the Commune spell, but-
- Yeah, I have it.
- You what?
- I commune.
- You can't underestimate Ostentatia.
- [Persephone] You really can't.
- Yeah, she brought you back to life!
- That was incredible.
- I'm gonna cast Commune.
[Brennan gasps]
Ostentatia fully vanishes, voom.
- What?
- What?
[players screaming]
- We're gonna come to that in a second.
- Bye!
- Whew, bye!
Tectonya goes, "Incredible.
I love it when something
f*cking wild happens."
[Isabella laughs]
- [Erika] Far out.
- Now as to the rest of this,
the crucible or chrysalis put into it
was that the Eidolons
would become infinite.
This would satiate the worry or concern
that the other gods had had
which was that the Eidolons
in their forms were too available
to the manipulation of mortals.
- Oh.
- That wasn't their choice, though.
It shouldn't have been.
- Their choice to what?
- It shouldn't have been up
to the gods to choose that.
The Eidolons should have
been able to choose.
- In their way, they were.
We are talking about a multiverse
which is often cruel and unfair.
The gods of light were themselves outvoted
by the other gods who feared
for the power of the Eidolons
in the hands of mortal beings.
[Persephone sighs]
Should the gods of evil had had their way,
those mirrors would have been
well and truly permanent.
And remember, we need only
understand the legends of titans
and various other beings that
have risen throughout time
to challenge the gods that the gods
are very fearful for their power.
Logran's escape, though
it was indeed a very stark
and dire choice, was one of
the only pieces of cleverness
that the God of the Forge
could see to manifest
in that moment to provide,
if not boundless choice,
at least a choice.
- Hmm.
- Which is a kindness, but
I'm really mad at the gods.
- You're mad at a lot of things.
- I am.
- Tectonya looks and says-
- That's a good emotion.
- "It is important to
understand that the Eidolons,
those that left their mirrors, do exist.
To be changed is a fact of reality.
They are not gone forever.
And indeed, I think that
as much as the youngest
of the seven may miss her
sisters, in my studies
and research I believe
that they may miss her.
- Yeah, they're not gone, from what I saw.
- Anima appeared to me.
- What?
- She appeared to me.
- Really?
- During my entrance.
She told me I wore the name well.
It meant a lot.
- Oh my God, Yelle!
- She spoke to you in
full, straight-up words?
- Like, with speech and everything.
- Oh, that's, that's, I, uh,
need to throw out a bunch of my research.
That's incredible, that's incredible.
Oh, amazing.
Oh, I was speaking kind of metaphorically.
They can actually just talk?
- Well, I don't know.
It seems like if the time
is right they can manifest
in some way that they did before.
- Could we possibly get them
to manifest to talk to Talura?
[Brennan and Becca gasp]
- [Brennan] Oh, I think it's-
- Seance!
- Friendship reunion.
- [Persephone] Oh God.
- Could I attempt Primeval Awareness
and see if I can sense anything?
- Oh, as you approach the Nekronomikron,
you feel powerful primordial forces
swirling through the storm.
And you feel fire, water, earth, air,
the force of life and nature itself
and something very old being
drawn to the Nekronomikron.
Almost time itself.
- I for sure am leaning over like.
- Sam, did you do this?
- Uh...
- Tectonya speaks to you and says,
"But what I was going to say is,
if indeed we are flying
to the Nekronomikron
because Talura was broken out of
her mirror
and was able to escape and manifest
in her physical, mortal
form, the good news is
Eidolons are only as powerful as the will
they have been asked to manifest.
So if Talura is not in the
process of granting a wish,
she would be quite easy to defeat.
- Sam!
- Did you...
- Did I what?
- I want to pull out my crystal
and load up the Legendarium
and just show her like, um,
I think Talura did that.
- How much will did you give Talura?
- How hard you wish, baby girl?
- Um...
[players laughing]
Um, well, a lot.
- Okay, how much, that's a class A.
- It's everywhere, it keeps going.
I keep zooming out.
- It's actually, it's sort
of like above a class A.
- [Aabria] Yeah.
- So what was the specific
wording of your wish?
- Um...
I look at the mirror. [laughs]
- You look in the mirror.
You wished for a class A, yeah.
- I wished for class A quest
to help my friends stay together.
- Ah, so in order to have
three of your six friends
graduate a year early,
you have doomed the
multiverse to unmaking.
- Well, so, okay.
- [Becca] Oh no!
- Okay, so first she did grant
it and it was a small one.
Like it was class A but it was small.
And then I handed her the mirror
so that she could see what
happened to her sisters.
- By not asking for something
specific you have given Talura
almost unlimited power
to interpret this wish.
A class A quest is anything
that threatens reality.
So, so the Eidolon of death.
- Uh-huh.
- Has an element of mortal
will which allows her
to interpret in any she want
because it is just a class A quest.
It literally is, give
us a problem to solve.
Tectonya begins to zoom
into it and goes, "Ah.
You know, it's interesting.
So the Eidolons sort of create everything.
Talura may want to sort
of loophole her way
into getting her sisters back."
- Cool!
- Yes.
- By undoing everything around us?
- Sort of a little do-over.
Yeah, a little, talk
about a Project Reset.
- Talk about a Project Reset.
- Yikeos.
- Oy, oy, oy, oy, oy.
- Oh no.
- [Rekha] That was a good one.
- Oh, undo all reality
so it could all begin again.
- I did a bad thing, didn't I?
- For a good reason.
- Well, the price that the
universe may end up paying
will be very handsome, but we
should at least you your GED.
- Yeah, can you sign this form?
- She says, "Of course.
Let me get my spectacles, okay, quill."
- Wow, it's so crazy you
could be a magical being
made of copper but you
can't make better eyesight.
- No, yeah, need reading glasses.
- That's crazy.
- She signs, she says, "As Superintendent
of the Solesian School System
I herewith bind reality!"
[mimics magical reverberations]
It's a big spell.
Screaming souls move
out in all directions.
"Should these seven maidens defeat Talura,
Eidolon of death, let them be graduated
from the Aguefort Adventuring Academy!"
- [Becca] Wow!
- Oh yeah, we could not have forged that.
- Did we not fake it?
- Danielle takes the little
hat that she's wearing
and throws it up in the air.
- Yeah, Katja moves her braid
from this side to this side.
- To that side, and she's
like, "Well, don't jinx it
'cause it's conditional on,
you know, saving reality."
- Oh, we got it.
[Brennan laughs]
- Isn't it ironic that Talura
put herself on this map
and was like, come defeat me, here I am?
- Well you see that, yeah,
Tectonya looks at you and says,
"Well of course, the
Legendarium would be able to map
even a much smaller quest than
this so the Legendarium is,
and of course Charity will also know
that the Eidolon is here.
Talura has the power to end reality.
That is very much within,
that's her domain,
the Ending of All Things.
[Becca gasps softly]
Yes.
- Okay, so we hate Charity
obviously and clearly,
but would our purposes
be aligned in this quest?
- No.
- [Aabria] With Charity?
- No, because Charity-
- f*ck that b*tch!
- I mean, I'm asking Tectonya.
- You bring up an interesting
point, Miss Luckstone.
- So maybe she'll be there, she'll help us
and then we'll k*ll her.
- I would say that two
very intense forces are at work here.
The first of which is an
ancient elemental being
is seeking to end reality.
The second is a very nasty lady is seeking
to harness that reality-bending
power to her own devices.
It is up to you to determine where and how
these opposing forces may
be played off each other.
I would not trust Charity.
- Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
- We're not giving her a death genie.
- I just mean in the way
that we led her to you
maybe she will lead us to
Talura and distract her.
- She nods and says, "Yes, I
would keep a definite eye out
for any Ministry officials
traveling there."
Tectonya looks at the
Legendarium again and says,
"It is possible, no, it is definite
that Talura is summoning her
sisters to her in this moment.
Remember that one of the
things she is trying to end
is the reality which is
composed of her six sisters
so in point of fact, her sisters are going
to be present there and coalescing there
as Talura unmakes everything.
So there is an opportunity for the plan
that Miss Nightingale mentioned.
It may be more likely that you can address
these infinite beings
as their infinite matter
is coalesced to this central point."
- I have an idea.
- A sister seance.
- Um, so I don't know if anyone noticed,
but the conversation
that I had with Talura
was a lot deeper going
than I thought it would.
My powers are different.
[tender instrumental music]
So I think we can use that connection,
the one that you have, too,
through her to the Eidolons.
And we can possibly do this.
- You're so powerful!
We're so proud of you.
- Oh, thank you.
- Tectonya looks at you, Sam, and says,
"The courage to reach
out to something infinite
and yet whole and finite in pain
may well have been the
act that saves reality.
Tremendous courage is the
mark of a great sorceress,
and I will say also here
that though your actions
have entered the multiverse
into a place of great risk,
they have also created an
opportunity for great healing.
Tumult, strife, a little bit of chaos
is sometimes what's needed.
I'm not one for the
status quo, after all."
Winks at Danielle.
- Ooh, to channel Danielle,
you have to open the wound to clean it.
- [laughs] Tectonya stands up and says,
"We will arrive in the Nekronomikron soon.
[sighs] Your task will begin there."
Rocketing through endless
spiraling columns,
there are ancient Dwarven-
- Oh wow, gorgeous columns.
- [Becca] Oh!
- [Persephone] Wow.
- [Brennan] Gorgeous columns.
- [Persephone] It's granite?
- Ringing of hammers, cling, cling, cling.
You see crucibles pouring molten steel
[screams] like falling through space.
You are suddenly-
- Brennan, what's a crucible?
- A crucible is a massive,
basically cauldron
used to melt down ore
into refined liquid metal.
It's the thing that's used to heat metal.
So huge crucibles, burning
forge light all around you.
And you see off in the corner
these massive, massive barrels
filled with glowing spears
and hammers and axes.
There's bolts of lightning and bows
and arrows and all these things.
And you see all the things
here are incredible,
but the things that this figure is wearing
are so humble given the incredible things
that have been crafted here.
A sweat-stained shirt, common boots.
And you see a mighty hammer raining down
on this glowing piece
of some wicked-looking
sword, dagger something.
Clang, clang. [exhales sharply]
Logran Soulforger turns around,
puts the hammer on the anvil,
wipes the sweat off his brow,
looks at you and goes,
"How's it going, Stan?"
- Stan?
- Yeah, Stanley Gucci, here you go.
And throws the dagger at you.
You see the head of Kurraghran,
the beast that you banished to the forge,
the soul has been forged
into a magic dagger.
- Oh, oh!
- Yo!
- I bet you'll like it, kid, hold on.
And you see he walks over,
starts throwing some of this
like, takes some steel ingots,
throws them into this crucible,
starts to melt them down.
You can see he takes some
tongs and puts a steel bar
into this massive furnace
to start heating it up.
He goes, "Whew, sh*t, how's it going, kid?
You need some water?
It gets hot in here, there's
a barrel of water over there."
- Wow, you are busy. [laughs]
- Yeah, no kidding.
The universe is about to be unmade
and all the gods put in a
request for weapons now,
but I didn't have f*cking time!
Like, you didn't think
this would maybe come up?
[players laughing]
- How old are you?
- [Erika] Hell yeah.
- Old as time, I made the world.
[Becca laughs]
- Is that like, a...
- Are you interested?
You got a crush on your god?
[players laughing]
- I got a crush on my God.
- Hey, it wouldn't be the
first time kid, look, he goes-
- Hey, and you don't talk
to me so it like, makes it-
- [Becca] Hot.
- Like more attractive.
[Aabria laughing]
- Unavailable, an unavailable-
- "Oh, I'm sorry."
He says, "You got your
spells in the morning
when you wake up.
You say your prayers, you get magic."
- Hey, everybody else's god talks to them.
- Yeah, 'cause they're all f*cking around.
- And then us f*cking Forge Dwarves
are over here looking like jackasses
because we're getting ghosted every day.
- No one's gettin' ghosted, all right?
- Well, I'm just gonna tell you,
like, there's talk around town
that like, you're not real.
- [gasps] You started that talk.
- I know, it's so funny.
[players laughing]
Somebody's been spreading
the vicious rumor.
- No, people are spreading
rumors that you're not real.
- I...
I'm sorry.
- Aw.
- You deserve to be spoken to.
[soft instrumental music]
There's a lot going on, and
there's a lot my, oh sh*t.
You see he goes over and
grabs a handful of dust like,
[exhales powerfully]
blows into the furnace,
pulls a bunch of shapes
that you see are stars.
Just pulls stars out of this
furnace, hits them on the anvil
as this Dwarf with burning
eyes, fiery hair, fiery beard
he says, "Go take this out
to the edge, thank you."
And this Dwarf flies out
with a bunch of stars.
- Hey, you don't have any
assistants around here.
Let me give you a hand.
[Becca gasps]
- It's gonna be like in "Ghost."
- [Brennan] You see-
[Isabella laughing]
- [Rekha] And you go around a god.
- [Aabria] Yeah! [laughs]
- You see he weeps a little bit.
- Oh!
- Is that sweat?
- Yeah, I'm f*cking sweaty.
My eyes are sweaty.
[Becca laughs]
You see he says, "Careful
'cause all this stuff
is made out of like, souls and-
- Hey, don't worry about it.
[group laughing]
- Ostentatia you get
your hair in a scrunchie,
pull your sleeves up.
He hands you a pair of tongs
that you know gripped your
planet in the dawn of time.
- So cute.
[group laughing]
- [Rekha] This tiny.
- And you help your God
begin to forge this stuff.
Give me an insight check.
Give me an insight check
and a religion check
at the same time and
kindly add them together.
- [Aabria] [gasps] Let's go.
- Oh my God.
- [Erika] Wow.
- 40.
- [Aabria] Baby!
- So I'll say this is insight.
- [Brennan] That's insight, yeah.
- 12 plus 13.
- 25.
- Oh my gosh.
- This is religion.
- 24.
- Dang.
- [Becca] 49.
- That is a 49.
Lots of people have a
powerful enough connection
to their divinity to
gain first-level spells,
to cast a Cure Wounds, that
they are religious in some way.
You hear working in the forge,
sweat dripping off your brow.
It hits the floor.
As it does it hits the hot
stone floor and turns to steam.
You are helping your god
fashion stars and light.
And you realize that as
you go over to this station
and that he opens a cabinet and
there are all these threads.
The threads are made
out of time and energy
and you stich them into a new cloak
that gets thrown out into
the edge of the universe
to become gravity and the
pull of bodies in motion
throughout time and space.
You have a profound revelation
and can feel yourself moving
from being just a cleric of a divinity
to being maybe something
closer to a prophet.
In other words, not someone
who just carries out
the traditions of their faith,
but someone who actually has
a revelation about their faith
and the ability to say new things
about what they believe to be true.
The work that Logran is doing here
to craft physical reality,
you know the people that would
have been doing this work
if Logran was not doing it.
And this is the physical reality
that the Eidolons would
normally be tasked with doing
and Logran is doing it instead.
- No wonder he's busy.
- And on a 49 you see Logran
make eye contact with you,
crying, again, to see that he has help
for the first time in, you know,
he has aides that are around
but it seems that all the help he had,
like, all these people helping him
are people that are just
coming with new jobs for him.
Messengers coming with new tasks to do,
people taking the work that
he's created somewhere else.
This is the first time that someone's
actually been able to lighten the load.
The reason that the
burden on him is so vast
and the reason that,
you heard him say like,
"The other gods are f*cking around."
He looks at you, is
still crying a little bit
as you realize the burden he
has removed from other people
as he says, "Those gals
did enough, you know?
They deserved a break."
- You know, if you have a position open,
I know a pretty good guy who needs a job.
- Here he looks down and says,
"The Eidolons got a really bad deal.
They got a really bad deal.
And I know that the out
that I made for them, that wasn't perfect.
You know, things were uh...
I did what I thought I could.
There are a lot of evil
gods who, if I try. [sighs]
There were other things I
could have tried to do."
- They're really happy.
- He fully weeps here
and gets down on one knee
and just goes like, "I
really, like, you know,
I've just been, I knew that
when the mirror, you know,
they're out in the universe,
they're doing their thing.
They don't gotta work for nobody no more,
you know what I mean?
We got it covered here in the forge and,
you know, I know that
mortals want to hear from me.
I know they do, but I...
Mortals were the reason that...
Mortals were one reason
that this all happened in the first place.
Not all of them, but a lot
of them knew about the power
of the Eidolons, wanted to
go after them and [sighs]
I just did the best, fastest
thing I thought I could.
And you know, once you're
in the sh*t, the requests,
the orders start coming in,
you kinda can't get a second
to think about anything else
that you're gonna be able to do
so I just started working and...
- Can I tell you something?
- Yeah.
- I make all my stuff,
and I don't want anybody to know
because I want everybody to think
that what I have is designer.
And I'm here, you're the designer.
[Brennan chuckles]
[tender instrumental music]
You're my Bottega.
- Coming from you, I
know how much that means.
[players laughing]
- It's so weird, like, material things
mean a lot to me, but I think
maybe not in the way that they shoulda.
It's like, we've had
this like, empty mansion
for like, my whole life.
- Yeah.
- And now, you know, my
dad's in a rough spot,
and he told me they were
gonna sell the house.
And my first thought was like,
people can't know that we're doing bad
which is why I
got as strong as I did so it wouldn't look
like we were doing bad and I could look
like we could afford everything.
And then it sort of took his light away.
- It's a pretty profound
realization to have.
- An order comes in for
Logran and Ostentatia
takes the ticket and puts
it up and starts working.
- [Rekha] Short-order cook.
- Let's go.
[players laughing]
- Two stars all day.
- Yeah, Grubhub.
- Ostentatia starts making that order.
Go ahead and give me a smith's tools check
with advantage
and you're gonna add wisdom
plus proficiency to this
so it should be a +9 to the roll.
- 18.
- You begin crafting
something there and as you're,
you get this huge order for
this complex thing that goes up
and you see you end up making
what looks like some kind of
comet or something like that.
- This is weird.
- And it's like a little bit lopsided
and Logran comes over to it and goes,
"This is beautiful."
- Mm, it's a little f*cked up.
- You have the hammer in
your hand as you take it,
and he is going to go ahead
and give the help action here.
- [gasps] Oh my God.
- [Aabria] Yes.
- As he puts a hand on your
shoulder and I'm gonna ask,
give me another roll with
advantage, if you'd be so kind.
- [Players] "Ghost,"
"Ghost," "Ghost," "Ghost."
- Come on Whoopi.
[Aabria laughs]
Oh my God.
- [Players] No!
- [Brennan] It's even worse?
- Did you nat one?
- No, that can't be it.
- [Rekha] What was it?
- [Brennan] Is that two nat one?
- No, I got a nat one and a three.
- No!
- Nat one and a three, cool.
- [Persephone] No!
- Okay...
- Ostentatia, the hammer comes down
and the comet shatters underneath it.
Your family's doing bad.
You think you're gonna lose your house.
And you feel fear build up in your body
as the hammer comes down.
[mimics hammer impacting]
And it breaks.
- m*therf*cker!
- Logran smiles, takes
the hammer and goes,
"This here,
[warm instrumental music]
this isn't your forge.
Your forge is waiting
for you out in the world.
You know where it is."
And you see he says,
"It's with your friends,
it's with your family, it's
with that adventurers' union.
That sounds like a
pretty good idea to me."
- You heard that?
- "I hear everything."
He says, "You want to know why it's okay
to love material things?"
- Yeah!
- People talk to me
about this all the time.
I got Elven deities
coming in here going like,
"Ah, contemplate the mystery of" f*cking.
[Ostentatia blows raspberry]
He takes a thing off the
wall and you see he says,
"I keep this here in the forge.
This was a hammer, a
couple hundred years ago.
Dwarven cleric, amazing.
[metal clanging]
In this time, right,
she forged this hammer
to be able to save her people.
This isn't just a thing, right?
This isn't a thing.
This is time, it's time
which is all that any of us have.
When you pour it into something like this,
what an act of giving,
what a moment of love.
You make all of your things."
And here you see he takes a button,
like a brass button off of
his apron, pulls it off,
puts it in his hand into
the fire, pulls it out,
slams it onto the anvil
and takes an embossed logo
which is four little line
marks dashed through a circle
which you realize is a
very stylized O and W.
- Cute.
- [Persephone] Aw.
- And he hands it to you and goes,
"You know, I'm not supposed
to tell the future to mortals,
but I hear a couple years from now,
a Wallache handbag is all the rage.
[players cheering]
[players laughing]
- Passes out.
[group laughing]
[Erika screams]
- Ostentatia wakes up back at the table.
- Ostentatia, you disappeared!
- What happened?
- You're like, foaming at the mouth.
- [Becca] Your skin looks great.
- [Aabria] Yeah!
- [Persephone] Do you need a napkin?
- Uh-uh.
- Are you sure you don't need a napkin.
- Oh.
- Yeah.
- You're kinda glowing though.
- Wait, what does the dagger do?
Do I still have it?
- Oh yeah, you have both
this little Ostentatia Wallache
emblem and this sick dagger
made out of the soul of a monster
that you cast into your god's forge.
- Is that Kurragha-rag-ran?
- I got f*cking decked out.
[group laughing]
- [Persephone] Wow-
- I put the O and W on as a belt buckle.
- Ow.
- [Aabria] Heck yeah.
- Incredible.
- It's your initials!
- Mm-hmm.
As you're turning it into a
belt buckle, you see on the back
of the emblem written in Dwarven runes-
- It's his phone number.
- It's his phone number.
No, you just see very, very small.
It's not even part, it's
almost like a secret,
little message you just see that it says
in Dwarven writing, from Logran.
Many miracles were granted to the world,
and to mortal beings did I grant
the greatest miracle of all,
that the world might be
reshaped through love and work.
And that is written around the other side.
And you think of your dad
and you think of your home.
You can pray for spells
and you've been praying for
a miracle for a long time.
Looking at how hard Logran
was working in that soul forge
and the fact that he was so
moved by you offering yourself
in that moment to aid that, you
don't know how easy the path
forward for your family will
be, but you feel your heart
fill with a ringing of
hammers on anvils and know
that there is no part of this world
that you do not have the power to reshape.
- Mm.
- Aw.
- So Ostentatia returns
and the ship moves
towards the Nekronomikron.
You're all gearing up,
everyone's long rested.
- Whew.
- You are all getting ready for literally
like the descent craft to bring
you down through the clouds.
And I will just ask if anyone
has any last things they want
to do aboard the Rombosa.
I also will say, Antiope and Sam,
you see Zelda looks at you, Antiope,
and sort of says to you like,
"Sorry, I knew about the,
I knew about the agent thing."
- It's okay.
Look, it's okay.
This is the time where
we have to figure out
what we want to be, and
I've said it before,
Penny and I talked, and I
want to say it again here.
There's nothing that
anyone could pick here
that could separate us.
We're a family so if you
want to be an actress, act.
Wanna be in the thing that
none of us know about, yeah.
- Me?
- Yeah, you.
If there was a random group,
a shadowy organization
that recruited you, you can do that, too.
We're connected by something stronger
than going out on adventures.
- It's a very foolish
thing that Talura is doing.
She, I, well, I'm sorry.
I seek not to judge, only to know.
[Brennan chuckles]
She thinks of the times
that she and her six sisters
spent together and feels like that's it.
Change is scary, you know?
And it's okay to be scared by that.
But you know, she's trying
to roll back the clock
in the most literal sense.
She doesn't know if that's
what her sisters want.
It probably isn't.
And she doesn't know that maybe
if what she goes forward
to might be better.
- Gertrude always says
when I get a new saddle,
"You have to get comfortable
being uncomfortable."
- I think I was just so afraid
of things changing again.
I haven't had a lot of
control over anything really.
And I think I'm just
afraid of what comes next.
I don't know if I want
to be an actress again.
I don't know if I want to sing again.
I don't know.
All I knew is that I don't
want any of you to leave me
like Penelope did or my mom did or...
- I want to like, grab you by the face.
We're not going anywhere.
And even if this is the,
nope, don't look down.
Even if this the last adventure we go on,
everything that's happened
before stays with you.
It goes through to the future.
It's okay, we're still here.
- Danielle pulls up the chart
of the water tablet and she's like-
- f*cking water table, ridiculous.
- Look, every single one
of these steps is valid.
Condensation, precipitation,
and the evaporation,
but it's all part of the same water cycle
and it's all still there, baby.
You can't create and destroy matter.
- How are you explaining
water cycles to me?
- Yeah, that's wild.
- [Erika] Yeah!
- You're kind of watersplaining.
- I am a water Genasi storm sorceress.
- [Rekha] Yeah.
- I get it though, I get it, I do, I do.
- Yelle, can I ask you a question?
- Oh, anything, yeah, I'm an open book.
- You just said you have
to get comfortable with the uncomfortable.
- I said that, but I'll never say it,
bring it up again, it's okay.
[players laughing]
- But have you ever let
yourself be uncomfortable?
- Oh, no, no, not even a little bit.
- Yeah, why?
- Oh, well, you know, it's,
I strive for complete loss of ego.
And I don't mean that in like a,
I'm not gonna be selfish way.
It's like, I want to
be one with everything.
Like that idea that Tectonya had
about being the big ball of
consciousness, that's my jam.
- [Aabria] Yikes.
- I'm gonna shed this flesh husk
and go back to the Earth one day, baby.
- I love your flesh husk.
- [Persephone] It's still you.
- [Becca] It's beautiful.
- [Erika] But yeah...
- You still gotta take
care of you and you don't.
- I trust that you'll take care
of me in whatever form I am
and I just want to be
there to help you all
in whatever way I can, you know?
It's, uh...
- That's not what I meant.
- You know what'll help me?
If you do that for you.
- Remember how it felt
to walk into that room?
I saw it on your face.
It's different than anything
you experienced, right?
Sometimes opening yourself up to that
can show you new things about yourself
that you didn't know and that are good.
You don't have to lose yourself for it.
- I think sometimes we're
made to feel like it's selfish
to want to feel nice, but it's not.
- Ostentatia's gonna take
off her Chanel earrings
and give them to-
- Oh my God, yes!
- Oh my God.
- Those are Chanel!
- They are.
[Aabria laughing]
- Oh.
- No, I'm not f*cking around.
That's the only designer thing I own.
[Brennan laughs]
- Wait...
- What, are you sure?
- Wait, we thought there was...
- Nothing.
- Okay.
- Because you know what?
You're a f*cking maniac, and
you may be one with the earth
and you're gonna shed your f*cking husk
or whatever the f*ck weird thing you said,
but you can also be a pretty
princess while you do it.
- [Persephone] Mm-hmm.
- [Isabella] 'Cause you're
a pretty princess to us.
- Danielle, as you put
the earrings on feeling,
you know, touched by
this act of generosity,
Zelda makes eye contact with you.
Give me an insight check.
[die taps table]
- Oh no.
- [Becca] Can I help?
- Oh, wait, no, no, no, it's 16.
- Oh, 16, okay.
You see Zelda realizing
something about you
that isn't positive.
[soft instrumental music]
And you see her get a little bit hurt.
And she's not sort of joining
into the love fest right now.
And there is a flicker of other
moments in Danielle's life
when people, adventuring
parties, other groups
had moments of realizing over time
that though they had
been close to Danielle
maybe they didn't want
to remain close anymore.
And Zelda in her fashion
just sort of lets her hair
fall over her eye and says nothing.
Tectonya steps forward and
says, "We have arrived."
- For the purpose of a feat I have,
does that count as 10
minutes of inspiring talk?
- It sure does!
[players laughing]
- For the first time I use
my Inspiring Leader feat
and the six of you all get
- What?
[players shouting]
- [Aabria] That includes-
- Beef me up.
- Zelda.
- [Aabria] That includes Zelda, yeah.
- Beef me the f*ck up.
- I wish temporary hit points stacked
'cause then I would do the
song on top of it but I won't.
- Antiope, I love you.
- I love you.
- So descending in a small,
little Zeppelin craft,
like a little 10-person craft
down to the base of the Nekronomikron.
You emerge out of the clouds
[mimics soft wind blowing] and see
a vast gray city.
Endless stone mortuaries,
catacombs, and crypts
as far as the eye can see.
Rumor has it that long
ago the Nekronomikron
was a city like any other
filled with the living
but that its people and
its rulers made pacts
with beings of the dead long ago
and created a city shrouded
in eternal undeath.
This place is a center of negative energy.
It is tied directly to the
elemental plane of death itself.
And you can feel the
storm coalescing here,
the clouds roiling overhead
as somewhere within the city
Talura is beginning to unravel
the fabric of reality itself.
What do you do as you see in the distance
the heart of the city where
you know Talura must be?
- Is Tectonya with us?
- Tectonya can come with you here.
She looks and says, "It occurs to me
that we have the Rombosa
on high, and I also know
that Charity and the
Ministry will be coming here
so there is a potential for threats
aside from the reality bending one.
Well, I'll cut to it.
I might want to be up in the sky
to blast some aircraft out
with terrifying magic."
- That's totally fair.
- [Brennan] Yeah.
- I don't think I got
my phone back from you,
so you can just hold on to it,
but like, please text someone
if like, my parents call or whatever.
- The group is called The Seven.
It should be probably
the most recent text.
- Yeah, I pinch it to the top.
- There's a lot of pictures and stuff.
- Don't look at the pictures.
- [Persephone] I mean, the ones
of Ostentatia are really nice.
- [Aabria] Oh, you're
just all up in my sh*t.
- Very photogenic.
- Tasteful...
[Rekha laughs]
All right.
You see she looks at you and says,
looking at the Nekronomikron as well,
it is a tangled web of
towers and walls and rubble.
There is a lot of climbing here.
- Oh!
- [Brennan] A lot of things to climb,
a lot of things like that so you see-
- I spritz her.
- It's all good, oh yeah.
- You see Cinnamon looks at you.
- No!
[players gasping]
- Should you need me...
- Oh my God.
- You need only call my name.
- I need you!
- I cast Fly on Cinnamon.
[Brennan laughs]
- Amazing, you cast Fly on Cinnamon.
- [Persephone] I cast Fly on Cinnamon.
- Cinnamon says, "All
right, you other horses,
I'm gonna head in." [laughs]
[group laughing]
- That's my girl!
- Sorry Taffodil,
but Katja needs her
emotional support horse.
- Oh Lord, you know I'm not
going into a dead city. [laughs]
Oh, I'm gonna call this one out.
I'll be up on the Rombosa manning one
of those gunner stations.
- Yo!
- You can't use lock picks,
but you can use a g*n?
- I don't know how to use a g*n.
[players laughing]
- Laffy Taffy.
- I'm sure you'll do fine.
- [chuckles] Okay, I'll try.
I mean, how hard can it be?
You point it and what, you kick it?
- Yeah.
- Kind of.
- Fine, that should work.
- That's what the saying is.
It's just point and kick.
[group laughing]
- Okay, I'll do my best!
With that, do you all
head off into the city?
- Can I use Primeval Awareness
to try to get a bead on
where sh*t's coalescing.
- You absolutely can.
Go ahead and roll a survival
check with advantage.
[dramatic instrumental music]
[die drops on table]
- We'll ignore that,
that's fine, I didn't.
Oh, thank God for the 11.
- Okay.
[wolf howls]
With Primeval Awareness,
Antiope begins to lead you
into the Nekronomikron.
As you are venturing forward into it,
your primeval awareness allows
you to sense the presence
of undead which this
city is crawling with.
Adventuring parties have entire adventures
in the Nekronomikron
and don't get a fraction
of the undead that are
crawling in this space.
However, you do sense a powerful
undead presence
unlike any you've ever felt before.
And for a second you almost
register it as primordial
and then you realize, it is
both undead and primordial.
It is Talura.
- Okay.
- You sense her because
the negative energy plane
is itself one of the inner planes,
undead are almost like a
specialized kind of elemental
in a weird way, and Talura
is the perfect combination
of those two things.
On an 18 survival and also
with Primeval Awareness
you can not only navigate
a track through here.
You can navigate a track through here
avoiding any pockets
of undead along the way
to the best of your ability.
- Before we go in there's
some stuff I want to do.
- Okay.
- So I am going to cast Protection
from Evil and Good on Ostentatia.
I know you're a cleric,
but you're also our biggest healer so.
- [Brennan] Cool.
- That means that you are protected
against certain creatures,
specifically like in this case
elementals, fey, undead.
- Thank you.
- [Persephone] I don't
know if you have that.
I can move that here.
- Okay.
- I am just going to
look at Antiope, Katja,
and Penny and go, "We can all do this.
We'll all come out of here.
We're gonna save the world."
- No problem.
I've seen what we can
do, and it's super badass
plus the power of friendship.
- You all have Bardic Inspiration.
[players gasp]
- Thank you.
- [Brennan] Amazing.
- Does Cinnamon have bardic inspiration?
- No.
- [Brennan] Only Katja.
- I gave Cinnamon Fly, that's all.
Oh sh**t I have no more Fly.
- I'm gonna say that you get Cinnamon past
the first couple layers of
defenses with that Fly spell.
- That's so kind.
- In the back of everybody's minds
they hear a little voice pipe up and goes,
"Hey, so I think maybe
it's time to let you know
this is probably the easiest
way to strategize without,
uh, you know, revealing our position.
- Are we hearing things again?
- Wait, is your mouth not moving?
- Oh, yeah.
- [Becca] What?
- Wait, that's you?
- [Erika] Yeah...
- I thought I just put you there
and imagined things you would say to me.
- Oh, well, I just never
really wanted to, kinda, hm,
it kinda freaks people out when I did it
and so I just kind of let it be like,
a little voice in the back of
your head that you know, uh...
- I'm not freaked out and I love it.
- Oh, great.
- You know not calling that
sh*t out is weirder, right?
You can be just like, I'm telepathic.
- Yeah, you could just
like, mention it, yeah.
- Yeah.
- It's like if you like,
fart and you don't, everyone's
like super weird about it.
- If you just said, it'd be funny, yeah.
- [Rekha] It becomes weirder.
- [Persephone] Yeah.
- It's, well, having
mental powers is like,
a little more long-lasting
and upsetting to people than a weird fart.
- Okay, Danielle, okay.
- Kinda one and the same.
- Can you read our thoughts?
Oh sh*t.
- No, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, not without,
I would never do that without consent.
- Wait, hold on.
I ask if I can send them
back to you through my mind.
- Like, if you want me
to, I'll do that, yeah.
- Were you saying something?
- I can detect thoughts.
Yeah, there's always been
times where it's like,
on your six, you know, like, whatever.
- No, I mean like before.
I always knew you could
communicate with us telepathically.
That seemed pretty obvious to me.
- Yeah.
- Right, no, yeah.
- Wait, really?
- Uh, yeah.
- Antiope and Danielle,
give me insight checks.
- Yeah, I detect thoughts on Penny.
Oh, 14.
- 18.
- You just hear like,
a ball of dust.
[Erika laughs]
- So you're busy talking
about your telepathy.
Antiope, you see Zelda
looking at Danielle looking really sad.
- I want to kick, like while
we're kind of doing this,
I want to kick a rock hard
enough and subtle enough
that there's a sound in that direction.
- [Brennan] Cool.
- And be like...
- Give me a perception check, Danielle.
- Oh, [chuckles]
- Oh my God.
- [Persephone] Hell yeah.
- Copy that.
As you continue along you
get to a place where you,
in order to avoid undead,
there's going to be Nightwings
and stuff flying up, very
dangerous, powerful undead
flying in the sky as you get closer
so you're gonna need to go subterranean
to move through a safer pathway.
You're also now getting deep
enough into the Nekronomikron
that you are now not choosing safe routes.
You are choosing safer routes.
- Got it.
- Zelly, scout out with me really quick.
- Yeah, oh, we're just gonna go ahead.
- You got like, tiny goat feet
so I figured you would be perfect.
- Yeah, rubble is great,
I love rubble, yeah.
- Yeah, it's so good for you.
Hey, what's going on?
- I'm not gonna bring it up.
We're about to go into a battle.
- Oh, I know, but it's
clockable, you good?
- Sorry.
- Did something happen?
No, you don't have to
apologize you're okay.
- It's just sort of obvious, right?
- Yes, but for the sake
of, what are, you talk.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You see she looks up and goes,
[tender instrumental music]
"I don't know.
I guess my feelings are Danielle...
Like, think about all the powers
that Danielle has shown us.
Think about how much Danielle
loves to explain things to us.
What's the one power she's
always hidden from us?
The fact that we could be in her mind.
And I just, I don't know.
Just Ostentatia talking to
her earlier and being like,
why can't you be vulnerable?
Why can't you be this,
why can't you be that?
And everyone was sort
of doing this love fest.
I know why Danielle can't be vulnerable.
I don't think she trusts us.
I think she loves us.
I know she loves us,
but I don't think she...
The thing that she provides to all of us
I think somewhere deep down in her,
she has no faith that we
would do the same for her."
- Look, I can't speak for her
'cause she can talk for herself,
but knowing what I know of her past
and bouncing from other groups,
I don't think it's that
she doesn't trust us.
I think that she's so
afraid of losing us too
that she holds herself back.
Ooh, I get that a little.
That hit kind of double hard.
That she's keeping herself
away, but nah, she does love us.
And I think she trusts us
with her life and everything.
I just don't think she's
comfortable yet, and that's okay.
I don't think she knows what to say yet.
- I think she does trust us with her life,
and I think that, like even today,
she said that she's not afraid to die.
I don't think her life is
something she values super much
and I think that's why she's
okay trusting us with it.
I think her heart, that
she doesn't trust us with.
- It really does taste like horse smells.
[Brennan laughing]
- You're eating it!
- Eating it.
- No, try it, yeah.
No, everyone gets one from
the fanny pack of tricks.
- I'm not trying it.
- Absolutely f*cking not.
- [Brennan] Danielle-
- It smells bad enough here
without smelling dead horse.
- On a 27 perception check,
you hear that entire conversation.
[players gasp]
- I pour water on this heart
to see if it'll grow a horse.
[players laughing]
- [Becca] Maybe overnight maybe.
- A very small, little sponge horse
sort of grows and goes "Why?"
[players laughing]
And dies.
- [Aabria] That sounds worse!
- Honestly Katja,
it seems like what you're
doing is sort of f*cked up.
- Yeah, yeah, you gave it consciousness
that it was immediately was gonna lose.
I feel like that's the
roughest thing of all.
- I loved her!
[Brennan laughing]
- It's been like a week though.
Why isn't the horse back?
Is it 'cause you fed some to...
- She's probably in a stable somewhere.
I haven't asked.
- Antiope and Zelda lead The
Seven down into the catacombs
and we are going to go to
TaleSpire to our first board.
- [Persephone] Whoa!
- [Aabria] Let's go!
- So you guys get to some staircases
where up at the top of this,
entering subterranean catacombs
you guys get to a series
of doorways and halls
that Cinnamon just straight
up will not fit through.
Cinnamon looks at you and says,
"I will meet you at the end.
I still have the gift of
flight and while I have that
I shall be there when you most need me."
- You're always there when I need you.
- Um, I'm not sure I'll be able
to maintain concentration for that long.
- I'll hoof it on over
there, I'll get over.
- [Persephone] Okay,
cool, I believe in you.
- You're perfect. [smooches]
- [mimics smooching] Cinnamon takes off.
We are not going to roll initiative here.
[sinister music]
- Uh-oh.
- But I invite you all
to move your minis around
as you sort of explore the space.
- Are the sewers sewerable?
- [Brennan] Penny, you go,
give me an investigation check
as you go to look at the sewers.
- Okay, I look in this first one.
- 13, hell yeah.
Sorry, Danielle.
- General sort of survival check.
- Yeah, give me a survival check.
- [Erika] Get the vibe.
- Can I give her advantage
and assist?
- Yes, you absolutely can.
You can give Danielle survival here.
- 25.
- Yo.
- Oh, there's not even a
f*cking dust mite in this room.
This is a dead, dead room.
And you look around
and see a bunch of the
skeletons around here.
You still have your Primeval
Awareness kicking, right?
- Yeah.
- You sense a weak undead
presence in this room.
- Oh, something in here is,
I know this is gonna sound stupid,
but there's like an
undead dead thing in here.
- Penny, you go to investigate.
On a 13 investigation check
you're looking at the sewers.
You have to get down into the water there.
- Ew, ew, ew, ew.
[die taps table]
- As you investigate, a
clawed hand reaches up.
[Becca gasps]
And a skeleton
grabs your wrist and pulls you down
and your face goes under the water.
[Becca gurgling]
Amazing.
Talespire, I'm gonna need
us to raise the water 25%.
- [Rekha] Oh, the water's gonna haze.
- [Persephone] Wow.
- [Becca] No!
- We're out of initiative
so because these are not full
combats here, I am gonna need,
first of all, a strength
saving throw from everybody.
Let me know if you got a 17 or higher.
So Sam and Ostentatia.
Antiope, Katja, Penny, and
Danielle are all nabbed.
Sam and Ostentatia are not.
We're not gonna go full-blown
initiative for these
so we're just gonna kinda
bounce around a little bit,
keep it a little bit more free form
in this sort of like trap area.
Ostentatia, you called for a Turn Undead.
Could you go ahead and read
that power for us real quick?
- It's within 30 feet and
it's a wisdom saving throw.
And if they fail, they're
turned for one minute.
But if their challenge
rating is lower than my level
I think they're destroyed.
- Okay, so 30 feet.
So only the people within there.
Is anyone on the other half?
- Me I think, right?
- Katja, so Katja's undead
that are grabbing her
are not gonna be in the range,
but it's a wisdom saving throw, right?
And your DC is...
- A 17.
- [Brennan] 17, hold on one second.
- Blub, drowning.
- Ostentatia you, whoom.
What does it look like as you Turn Undead?
What manifests magically
as you Turn Undead?
- They get my hair.
[Brennan laughing]
- Oh my God.
- As you summon forth
this power to turn undead-
- And they get an Ostentatia
Wallace logo on their head.
- [Rekha] Oh my God.
- Yeah, your designer logo
burns bright with forged fire.
All the bones crack apart.
All of the undead grappling
Sam, Ostentatia, Danielle,
Katja and, oh sorry, not Katja,
Penny, Antiope, and Zelda are destroyed.
So half of the room's bones are sundered
with this Ostentatia Wallace Turn Undead.
Sam, you want to-
- [Persephone] Shape water.
- Amazing, what five-foot
cube do you want to affect?
- Penny, I want to get as much water
away from her as possible.
- I jumped out once the saving throw.
- [Persephone] Oh, you jumped out?
- No, you're still by that grate,
that sewer grate you were looking in.
- [Becca] Okay.
- [Persephone] Your head's underwater.
- Your head's underwater.
The water's moved up high enough.
But Penny, you see that
the water has pushed away
and is now back to just around your knees
as Sam saves you there.
- Penny.
- I want to look over
at Katja and go, can I?
- Yeah.
- Sweet.
And I want to pull out
one of the mirror arrows.
- [Brennan] Hell yes.
- Like, let's line this up.
This is gonna be an undead thing for a bit
and sh**t the one on her.
- [Brennan] Incredible, go
ahead and make an attack roll.
- Thank you!
- Not calling any shots.
I would like to hit please.
f*ck, 15.
- 15 hits 'cause you
didn't take any minuses.
- [Aabria] Thank God.
- Thank you!
- I've learned my lesson.
- Go ahead and roll damage.
- [Aabria] Five points of damage,
and now it's my favored enemy.
- Undead are your favored enemy
for the rest of the encounter.
Danielle and Penny, is
there anything you're doing?
- Oh gosh.
- Uh, Wild Shape into like,
you see like a whole swarm of piranhas
that form into the
shape of a bigger, like,
- Amazing.
- You know,
when they're trying to pretend
to be all big and stuff.
- Yeah, like in cartoons.
- Yeah, like in a cartoon.
- [Brennan] Incredible.
- It's bigger than one big fish
just like the proletariat.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Wow, there you go.
Swarm of piranha.
You used your action
to turn into a school
of piranha and Penny.
- I am going to cast
Disguise Self on myself
so that I can look like Sam.
One, I'll be taller, my head
will be out of the water.
And if other things are afraid
of a water Genasi spellcaster
then maybe I'll fake them out.
- You, whoom, make yourself-
- It does not hold up
to physical inspection.
It's just an illusion.
- [Rekha] This is the illusion.
- Cool, illusion, whoom.
- [Persephone] yeah.
- And Katja, that's gonna be you.
- Is there one grabbing me?
- Yes, there is one grabbing you.
- Okay, can I roll an attack roll?
- Yes, go ahead and roll an attack roll.
Please do so with disadvantage.
- Okay.
- Also, what is my hair doing, like what?
- [Becca] It looks awesome!
- [Persephone] I mean, it's
like, awesome for now but like-
- A nat one. [laughs]
- Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Oh, you're too far.
- TaleSpire crew, let's
raise that water to 50%.
- [Becca] Wait, wait,
wait, wait, wait. [screams]
- [Rekha] So my head's
underwater now, right?
- Your head's underwater.
With that nat one on the attack
roll and the saving throw.
- Yeah, kind of cool that
I rolled two nat ones.
- [Isabella] Pretty cool-
- Katja, what is your
constitution modifier?
- Which would be this?
- [Brennan] Mm-hmm.
- Plus nine.
- [Brennan] Or no, no.
- No, no, sorry, this, plus five.
- Okay, you can hold your breath
underwater for six minutes
as you roll that nat one
on that saving throw,
and you feel the bony arms of
the skeletons on the ground
pull you under the water
and hold you there.
You lose four out of your
six minutes of breath.
- Okay.
- We're gonna go back
to the top, Ostentatia.
- I would like to cast Fabricate
and make a boat out of the stones.
- [laughs] Ostentatia, you cast Fabricate.
Boom, create a stone
boat in the water, whoom,
and can crawl into it with your movement.
- [Isabella] Mm-hmm.
- Incredible, Sam, what are you doing?
- I'm going to-
- You should get on my boat.
- And we don't have to go
in the same initiative order
so Antiope, what are you gonna do?
- Can I deal my full round of attacks?
- Yeah, come back to me.
- [Brennan] Yeah, cool, cool, cool.
Yes, give me your full round of attacks.
- Slayers Prey and then attack, attack.
- You're gonna be rolling
these with disadvantage
'cause you're sh**ting through water.
- Okay.
- Oh, wait a minute, sorry.
Water would be like cover,
you have sharpsh**ter.
You sh**t fine through water.
- Yeah!
- Go for it.
- Cool, cool, cool.
- Those both hit.
- 32 points of damage.
- Katja, as you are being
pulled under and can feel
[coughs] breath leaving you, arrows
[mimics arrows slicing
water] go through the water
and shatter the bones
around you, you are free.
- [gasps] For one moment
I think, Cinnamon?
And then I go, no, Antiope did it.
[group laughing]
- Honestly, a huge compliment.
- [Persephone] Who's underwater?
- No one is held, but the
water is rising rapidly
and you are underground.
There is a ceiling up above you.
- Oh no!
- I've got a question.
- [Brennan] Uh-huh.
- Ooh, yeah.
- Oh, this is like, so as
we see it there's doors.
This is a sewer system, correct?
- Sewer system and this
hall is lined with doors.
There's doors everywhere.
- Yeah, I wanna push one.
- The little swarm of piranhas
starts opening all the doors.
- Okay, you have one
free object interaction.
Do you want to make an
investigation check to try
to ascertain the right door?
- Yes, yes.
- [Brennan] Go for it.
- There's like, some sort of
drainage system involved here.
That would be,
- I'm gonna say 22 is a very high roll.
You rule out, there are seven doors
near Katja that you rule out.
You swim through, try all of
those, it is none of those.
- Can I try the other ones?
- [Brennan] Give me your investigation.
- And Danielle says in the her mind,
is like, "Open the doors."
- I can swim and breathe underwater
so I'm gonna roll investigation.
- Go roll investigation, yep.
- And could I cast
[die taps table]
Augury?
- Nat one.
- Yes, we're gonna let everyone go
and the room's gonna go again.
- Nat one.
- Nat one, okay.
Yes, Penny.
- How heavy does the
sewer grate below me look?
Or is that still guarded by a skeleton?
- [Brennan] The sewer grate
by you looks somewhat heavy.
Give me an investigation roll.
- My dice are broken.
That's...
- Do you want to use... [laughs]
- I'm gonna hold on to my luck.
- Okay.
- I don't know.
Investigation, I rolled a six.
- [Persephone] Is that a turtle?
- Sam and Penny begin to search.
You do not discover any
correct door out of here.
- I wanted to cast my Invisible Mage Hand
and try and lift up the grate.
- Hmm, I can dig that.
You try to lift up the sewer
grate with your Mage Hand.
- It's invisible though
so the skeletons wouldn't
see it to stop it.
- Can I ask which sewer
grate are you going for?
- You know what?
I look at Antiope and I am just
in awe of her majestic arrow
and I go for the middle one by her.
- [Brennan] The middle one
by Antiope, incredible.
- And the hand, it's invisible,
but it's sort of tip-toeing.
[hums cheerfully]
- Okay, give me a sleight of hand check.
- [gasps] Yes, it's 23.
- You go to cast Mage Hand.
It grabs onto something,
pulls it to the side.
And in the water you feel yourself, again,
as Sam and Danielle and
Katja are all fully submerged
and Ostentatia is in this stone boat.
Ostentatia's got a hand up
as the ceiling is approaching
as the water rises.
You disguised as Sam Nightingale feel
a hand, not bony,
but soft caress your cheek and-
- I call out to Nera.
- The face of Nera of the
eidolons looks at you and says,
"It takes a very clever and cunning mind
to remain fluid and calm
in the face of adversity."
- No one's ever called me those things!
- You see she says, [sighs] "My daughter,
you are water Genasi,
born and bred.
- Oh yeah, I mean, um...
- I give you my gift.
[players laughing]
- This dumb b*tch can't tell it's not Sam?
- [Persephone] I love it.
- Your mage hand.
- She's really farsighted.
She's like, up close.
- Your mage hand, Nera's
like, very water feeling.
It seems like, I'm just
kind of checking in.
It seems good, all right,
good job and then is gone.
And you see your Mage Hand turns the grate
which was the trick of the thing
that there's all these doors
and it was one of the grates.
- Yes, yeah!
- Yeah.
- I was like, what's the
sneakiest thing in here, boom.
- The water, whoosh.
[water splashing]
Once you turn that grate,
the runes realign on it
and the water-
- I found the bathtub plug.
- The water, zoom, zooms through.
- Thank you, Penny!
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
- [Aabria] You rock.
- Well, now we got a boat.
- [Becca] Call me Sam.
- I don't know how to swim.
- [Persephone] I don't
know how I feel about that.
- [Brennan] Yeah, stone boat
kind of slowly lowers to the ground.
- [Becca] Call me Penny Sam.
- It's a good boat.
- All of you can continue.
And actually, all of the doors
were in fact false doors,
and the only answer is to
go deeper down to the grate.
- Ooh.
[Becca laughing]
- We are going to move into the next map.
Let's go ahead and move to
the next map, if we could.
- I'm so sorry I broke
your puzzle so fast.
- We could have gotten stuck.
- I'm just really good at puzzles!
- No, I am so glad we didn't get stuck
in this f*cking stupid
place for this long.
Oh, do the piranhas die?
- No, she changes back.
She changes back, all of them
form into one, the big fish.
They actually turn into a big fish
and then turn back into Danielle.
- Do they eat each other
to turn into the big fish?
- Yes, they do.
- That's very good.
- After long traveling underground,
you begin to ascend
through spiral staircases,
wrought iron ladders all the
way up through dark catacombs
and eventually realize that even though
you cannot see the sky
you suddenly realize
that you have left from deep underground.
Even as you're going up
through pitch black catacombs,
you get the sensation somehow like,
oh, we have gone from
underground to aboveground.
We are in a tall tower.
And emerge on a rampart
with strong wind blowing
in all directions.
- Penny, can you dry me off?
It's very cold up here.
- Oh, I cast Prestidigitation which I now.
How did I do this?
And I dry out Antiope's outfit.
- Thank you.
- And everybody's if I can.
- Yes, you absolutely can.
I'm gonna say, you
approach this next tower.
Any part of that is wood
or wasn't made of stone
is rattling and being
threatened to be torn off
by the power of the wind up here.
The wind is not even coming
most fiercely from the sky
but feels like it is coming
from inside of the tower.
If not for these giant
walls on either side,
you truly believe you would
be ripped off the rampart
and thrown to the city below.
What do you do as you approach the door?
- As we get towards the door
and I hear the wind I use my ability
Storm Guide, if it is windy
you can use a bonus action
each round to choose the
direction that the wind blows
in a 100-foot radius
sphere centered on you.
The wind blows in that direction
till the end of your next turn.
So I can control where the wind blows.
- [Aabria] Dope.
- Incredible.
What direction would you
like the wind to blow
as you approach the tower?
- Well I can turn it, I
can control it in a sphere
so I would just like
to push it away from us
and have it spin 100 feet out.
- Okay.
- So like, we're almost like
at the eye of a hurricane
like it's wind blowing all around us
but we're calm wherever we're centered on.
- Hell yeah.
- [Becca] This is scary.
- [Rekha] I know, is it just a drop?
- [Becca] Who's afraid of heights?
- [Brennan] Yeah, you see a tall drop.
As you approach-
- Who dis?
[gasps] Who are these, Dementors?
- I mean...
- No copyright.
- You see three spirits appear here.
Demomplegangers?
[Aabria laughs]
- Appear here.
- Can Zefira help us?
- I will say this, Sam has
single-handedly eliminated
a tremendous part of this challenge.
- Oh no!
- Hey!
- We will break you every time.
- Every time, so yeah, Sam,
you just control the wind,
and what you could see was a tower
that was going to hurl all
of you into the center.
- Oh.
- The wind was going to like,
pull you off of the
rampart into the center
and cast you down to the city below.
Instead it's all like a
Gravitron, you've probably-
- Wait, hold on, watch this.
I jump into the middle.
- And the wind just
buffets you back to the.
[Becca cheers]
- Oh, I want to do it.
- Yeah Danielle spreads her wings
and her long cape is very
like scroll wing seats.
Whee, like sugar glider.
- Sam, you're so awesome.
- Who says an undead city can't be fun?
- I'm having a great time
- It's full Gravitron here.
The wind is blowing so
powerfully against you all now
that you could probably walk
on the wall on the outside
as the wind pushes you up against it.
- Okay. [laughs]
- Danielle has the spider Birkenstocks
so she's like, sugar gliding
onto the surfaces and going.
[Danielle mimics shoes sticking]
- I'm gonna actually go ahead
and need Antiope, Katja,
and I think Zelda are all going
to need wisdom saving throws.
- Ooh.
- 21.
- Remember you have Bardic Inspiration.
- Oh.
- Probably gonna need it later.
- [Aabria] I want to
know what bad thing's...
- [Persephone] It doesn't last for long.
- So sorry it was-
- 21.
- [Brennan] 21.
- 11.
- You see one of the spirits
in the center of the room
goes to sort of charm you and goes,
[inhales raspily] "Come
into the center of the wind.
Let the air bear your soul aloft."
And everyone here's going
to get one chance to react,
but you see that Antiope
loses a wisdom saving throw
and is preparing to jump
into the spirit's arms.
- I'm tightening my laces like, all right,
let me get a good leap here.
- A good old fashioned leap here.
Danielle, yes.
- Charm person.
- You're gonna cast charm person on-
- She's like.
[chimes twinkling]
[Becca mimics chimes twinkling]
- Bling bing.
- [Becca] Bling bing.
- Bling bing.
- [Persephone] Bling bing.
- Bling bing.
- That's the time I roll high, 19.
- Ah, oh no!
- This isn't the time.
I have to go bear my soul aloft, hold on.
- Aw.
- Yes, Ostentatia.
- It's not a no.
It's just a, not right now.
- Dispel magic.
- Incredible.
- Does that dispel the wind thing?
- That dispels the Dominate Person.
Go ahead and give me a
wisdom ability check.
- 16.
- 16, amazing.
Ostentatia, you break
the spell on Antiope,
and as you do that Zelda
is also going to make an athletics check.
That is a nat 20.
[players cheer]
- Yeah!
- So as you dispel the
spell Zelda grabs Antiope
and full springs across
the chasm and just skids
and bashes through the door
on the other side like,
"I'm not gonna let
anything happen to you!"
- [Players] Aw.
- I just hug her back.
Thank you.
- The rest of you all
have actions that turn,
and the distance is so
minimal that I'm going to say
that the wind being here,
you all scoot past this immediately.
The biggest part of that challenge
was the wind sucking you all out,
and that's not a thing anymore.
- [Becca] Beautiful map though.
- [Players] Beautiful map.
- [Brennan] Beautiful map.
- [Rekha] That round
went on for two minutes.
- [Brennan] I know, we
were there for two minutes.
- As I leave, I command the wind pressure
to just push these spirits all
the way down to the center.
- As it does you see the spirits go down,
[mimics wind rushing] and
you see another face appears.
A flitting-
- Zefira.
- Worried-looking face going,
[gasps] "I have very little time left.
Younger sister does have
a temper sometimes."
She reaches out to the
person there with Antiope
and touches Zelda and says,
"Please take care of things
and I don't know, I feel that
something is being unraveled."
And Zefira disappears down below you.
- I'm just in Zelda's arms by
the way, I am enjoying this
like, thank you very much.
- As Zelda got a gift
from the wind Eidolon.
- You see that Zelda already
had a 55 movement speed
and has that Fleet of Foot
swift as the wind thing.
Oh sorry, you had-
- No, I'm just hugging Zelda.
- You see that she looks
at you and says, "Wow, oh.
It was cool to get a
gift from an elder being
that seemed really super stressed."
- Ooh, that's a-
- [Erika] Danielle grows
a couple of mushrooms.
- This is kinda cute.
I'm feeling this, this is cute.
- Oh, hey.
- Hey, hi.
- Thank you very much.
- I love you so much.
- I love you so much.
I give her a little kiss on the horns.
- [Persephone] You two should date.
- [Becca] [gasps] On the horns.
- She is with someone
and this is not the time!
- I mean, when is ever the time?
- Okay, I appreciate love during strife.
- All I said is that you two
would be cute if you dated.
- [Aabria] Thank you.
- And you see she says, "I think that's,
I agree, I think that's true."
- Oh my God, thank you, aw.
- [Persephone] Yeah, yeah, right?
- Winks she says, "Sorry,
I winked behind my hair.
The other eye winked."
- I didn't see it.
- "Yeah, it did."
- But I felt it. [laughs]
- We move into a room
in which all of you see
the central sort of humble dwelling
or humble room in this tower.
And you see in the
middle covered in lichen
that has long since died
the husk, the carcass
of an ancient moss on it is a sundial
that is cracked
and partially ruined and falling apart.
- Can I do a history check?
- Yeah, give me a history check.
[die taps table]
- 15.
- You look up and see ancient,
the walls are actually made
of ancient headstones of graves here.
Looking at the sundial you
look and see a number of doors
leading forward from this place.
There might be something
underneath the moss of the sundial.
You can't quite read
the figures on its face,
but this an ancient timepiece,
although you don't know
how it would have worked in
this room with no sunlight here.
- I have a real stupid, uh, no.
- Do it.
- Like, I have a high survival.
Is there any chance that
I can catch any sense
of the way light would be in through here
to try to figure out
how to make the sundial
tell any amount of time.
- Mm-hmm, yeah, give me a survival check.
- Fire is light.
- 15.
- Okay.
There's a place that there might have,
it looks like that maybe
stone was added to it
and light could have come through.
You go to move it, and as you move
and sort of pull some of
this dead husk of moss
off of a gravestone you see
a name on the gravestone,
Antiope Jones, and you vanish.
[player gasps]
- She vanishes?
- [Brennan] Vanishes, gone.
- [gasps] Antiope,
Antiope, are you invisible?
- [Persephone] Where did Antiope go?
- You all see Penny go up to the wall
and step onto a gravestone.
Then as she falls through and vanishes,
the name Penny Luckstone appears.
- What is happening?
- One by one, each of you vanishes.
- Time.
- Can I roll for arcana?
- Yeah, give me an arcana check.
- What the F just happened?
- Can I also roll for arcana?
- 19.
- [Brennan] Yeah, 19.
- Let's go.
- Penny, you're rolling arcana
here as you tumble through.
- 22.
- 22 for you.
Antiope, I also want you to give me,
actually give me perception.
[tense instrumental music]
- 16.
- Arcana, something is happening here.
You're not vanishing because you're dying.
You are all in the same space,
but I think Penny realizes
you're not all in the same time anymore.
- Oh...
- Antiope, you feel a
presence by your side
in a kind of inky, dark void.
It feels cold here.
Your favored enemy is undead.
Currently you have your
Primeval Awareness around.
You sense a powerful primordial being
sort of walking beside you.
Young though she is,
she does have the dominion
to end all of this.
It is her domain.
In matters of death, she
cannot be questioned.
And if she calls for reality
to die, we must answer.
You are youngest of your
family, are you not?
You look up and see, the
other faces that have appeared
have been composed of their element.
And the face that appears
here is almost imperceptible,
like drawn in crystal line art
like something that's barely even there,
but so ancient and powerful.
- Oh man, I was drawn
to use this clear die
when I rolled for her.
- You knew, you knew.
- And I was like, why this one?
I don't know.
- You see Chronoa looks at you and says,
"All of the elements may
be bent in their time
towards the purpose of death
in their time to the purpose of death.
I hope that you can make the
most of the time you have had."
And you're in a
military graveyard
outside of Bastion City.
A lot of members of your family
for many generations back
have been buried here.
There are various markings
that appear on headstones
and in mausoleums here and
places of honor and respect.
And you see the same headstone,
though it is not covered with lichen,
that bears your name
here placed at the end
of a long line of headstones unmarked
with neither honor nor merit.
- I'm gonna walk up to it.
And I want to reach out
and I want to rot it.
I want to reduce it to rubble.
- [mimics rocks pulverizing]
The stone crumbles
and falls away and you see before you
a woman stumbles out of the tree line
with an arrow in her chest, epaulets,
medals, decorations.
An older Antiope with
gray in her hair is dying,
has been shot in the heart with an arrow.
You don't feel Chronoa anymore.
You've left her side.
You're going into something here,
but you see something dying in this space
and you look at yourself,
blood oozing from your mouth
and looks up and says,
[sputters and coughs]
"Don't turn your back on
this, don't let me die."
- What happened, what, why did?
- "You... [coughs]
You can still be this."
And you look and see
the epaulets on the coat
from a servant of the Ministry.
"You can still be this, don't let me die."
- I pull my bow out and I
use one of the mirror arrows.
[Rekha screams]
And I aim for the center of her head.
I choose how I spend my time.
[bowstring twangs in release]
- [mimics arrow slicing air] Pow!
[players cheering]
Incredible!
You fill yourself with the gift of time,
the ticking of moments,
the time you spent,
the fact that you were
always called a late bloomer.
What is late?
You are always on time.
- Oh.
- Your arrows never miss,
and you are surrounded
in a storm of arrows, each perfectly paced
to arrive at their target in motion
through the vast mysteries of the cosmos.
- I'm fine.
It's very hot, my eyes
are sweaty, it's fine.
- Chronoa looks at you and
says, "Never late, my dear."
You move through that space.
Normally these arrows only
last until a long rest,
however you are in a time storm right now
so for the rest of your life
an additional favored enemy
will be the people you
don't want to become.
- Yo, yes, self-actualization!
[players screaming]
- Oh my God.
- It's too good!
How am I here?
- [Persephone] So hot!
- Why is this hitting so hard, so hard?
- [Persephone] Oh, that was so good.
- Antiope, in this moment you
feel that you have a gift.
You know that your friends
are similarly cast adrift.
What you basically see is that Talura,
by summoning each element
of the Eidolons here,
each of them is flooding.
Like, what is the way that
death would manifest water?
Drowning, what is the way that death
would manifest the wind?
Tearing apart structures and
hurling people into oblivion.
The way it's manifesting time
is like, every person here
is confronting their
eventual death through time.
You can move through this space.
Who is the next person you move to
that feels like the closest
to you in this space?
You know that Penny and Katja
were the ones right
behind you, for example.
You feel the ability to maybe
save all of your friends here,
but who would you move
to first in this space?
- So she's thinking about
her future and her past.
She's going back and
remembering like back in the day
when she was still best friends with Katja
and that's who she reaches for.
- Katja.
- [Rekha] Yes.
- You are in an abattoir.
You're in a place where
they slaughter livestock.
- Hm...
[Aabria stifles laughing]
Oh my God, okay.
- You are standing there
and laid out on the table,
her sternum cracked open.
Don't worry, I wouldn't
do it with Cinnamon,
is your mother Jana.
- Oh.
- Oh, it's just her mom.
- That's fine.
Yeah, that's fine.
- Whew!
- [Brennan] I thought it
was gonna be my horse.
- We thought it was gonna
be your real mom, Cinnamon.
- Oh my God
- Nope, I'm good.
- Close one.
- [Rekha] Yeah.
- Katja, your mom looks up at you,
dead on the table and speaks to you.
"You're still waiting for it, aren't you?"
- Waiting for what?
- You had 100 things to say,
but ultimately the thing
that you most want to say
can't come out of your mouth.
- Why do you think that is?
- 'Cause the thing you most
want has to come out of mine.
- You think that after all this time
I want to hear you say, I'm sorry,
I love you,
I never meant to leave you?
- No.
Oh, you're not afraid of me.
I know what you're afraid of.
And you leave the abattoir.
Antiope saw a vision of her future
and you see a vision of your past.
In a bright pink T-shirt with
a "Babysitter Horse" backpack
is a nine-year-old Katja
Cleaver in the twilight
outside of Skullcleaver Elementary
which is named after her family.
And she's sitting on the
curb and has been waiting
for a car that is still not here
for about an hour and a half.
[Becca sobs]
What's this Katja have on her face
in this memory of the past
of being forgotten here?
- This little Katja,
this is not the first time
this has happened to her.
This is not the first time
she's had to shoo away
a line of teachers asking
if someone's coming
and her saying, "Oh yeah, my
mom just said she'd be late."
- Katja, you are standing
over this figure.
And you see, just like in the past,
this Katja has been here for so long,
is sitting on the curb,
turns as it gets dark
and puts her head on her backpack
and you begin to smell
flowers, jasmine, honeysuckle.
And you see in the distance a headstone
that reads your father's name
and hear your mother's voice say,
"You know what's truly dead and gone?
This little girl.
You want your dad to come home?
He can only come home to you, Katja.
This stays in the ground."
And you see as little Katja
is covered in flowers,
you do know that
the request for your dad to come home
is being made by a woman who is
Some things go away, and
there is no childhood
for your father to share with you.
- I peel back the flowers on little Katja
and I say,
"Even if no one else is
there to share this with you,
I was," and I scoop her
on my back like a horse.
[Brennan and Aabria laughing]
I say, "You're coming with me."
- Katja, you move forward from
there and lost here in death
you feel a hand reach out.
Coming through time itself,
Antiope reaches out to grab you.
- Hey.
I love you, b*tch.
- I f*cking love you.
I love you, too.
- Nightmare, yoink.
[group laughing]
- Whew, yoinked out, amazing.
Katja and Antiope, you emerge
from Katja's time stream.
Where to next?
- Who do we got?
I mean, uh...
- Make a choice faster, Ostentatia!
- Ostentatia, I was gonna say!
- Yeah!
- Oh my God!
- We are best friends!
- We have to get Osten.
[group laughing]
- Ostentatia, you are in a rumbling,
cavernous place.
You can feel that you're deep underground,
and an earthquake is happening.
These are literally the
halls of your fathers.
These are ancient places
where Dwarves are interred.
There are sarcophagi everywhere.
And they are breaking as
stones fall from the ceiling
and crush them and they
are shattering around you.
And you can see that you have a hammer
and chisel in your hand.
What are you doing in this moment
as you can see these things,
these beautiful marble sarcophagi
being ruined and destroyed?
- Cast Mending.
- You begin to cast Mending
and start fixing them.
You feel yourself fighting
the tide of the earth itself
and you begin to hear
voices around you going,
"Oh, it's such a sad
thing, that poor girl.
Can you imagine?
Such a f*ck that they had to
send their daughter to work.
What a f*cking piece of sh*t."
And you can hear voices pitying you.
And you look around
and see a pile
of corpses
in a corner of the room
for the unhonored dead.
Honorless, not given the
reverence of a place of burial.
And you see Carmine atop that pile.
What does Ostentatia do in this moment?
- Not using any magic,
she's gonna take the rubble
[mystical instrumental music]
from around her and
start building
like, what could be like mausoleums.
- You go and start
building these mausoleums.
And you hear
the voices around you go,
"Oh, it breaks your f*cking heart.
Look at her, she's
trying to build something
for that piece of sh*t, why?
What's the f*cking point?"
And you can hear, again,
a chorus of all these
Dwarven ancestors around.
People that were master
crafters and master smiths
and can hear them talking
about your family.
And they say, "It breaks your
f*cking heart, that poor girl.
Look, she's still trying to
give honor to..." [scoffs]
And you hear a final voice say,
[sighs] "Someone should
put her out of her misery.
It's not worth it."
And you see your body
sort of crumpled.
It's almost skeletal.
It looks like it's been here forever,
but you see it is wearing your jewelry.
And it is
at the base of a wall
where you have been carving
all of the names of your
family, Carmine, Lucia.
And you see over and over again
to the point of almost madness
that this body of yours
has carved into the wall
over and over again the words
written in Dwarven runes,
"accept us", written
over and over and over.
The skeletal figure of this,
what you assume is a corpse
looks up, but you see
it is in fact Ostentatia
looks up. [inhales harshly]
If I only carve a little
bit more, it'll come true.
If I only carve a little
bit more, it'll come true.
They're not gonna be able to pity us.
- b*tch...
[group laughing]
They pity us 'cause they ain't us.
- [laughs] You see there is a thunderclap
from under the Dwarven caverns and
you see her look up
and see you and points to
your belt buckle and says,
"What is that?"
- [chuckles] Best new brand on the market.
[group laughing]
- Whew!
- Antiope, you move through
time with Katja behind you
and you grab Ostentatia.
You see Antiope and Katja coming through.
- Wow!
- Wow.
- [Aabria] It's good.
- This place is f*cked up!
- Yep, that sucks.
- Ostentatia, as you jump in,
where to next as you're
moving through time?
You can feel you're picking up steam.
Time is racing forward,
where do you go now?
- Where do you want to go?
- Penny!
- Penny!
[Aabria and Rekha screaming]
- We still have it, we still have it!
- Incredible.
[Rekha laughing]
- I'll pass. [laughs]
[players laughing]
- Penny, you are looking
through the scope of a r*fle
at a woman walking with
a candle, her back to you
through a graveyard
kneeling down at a grave.
And you hear a voice in your ear saying,
"When she kneels down and places
the candle, take the shot."
[suspenseful instrumental music]
- I take the shot.
- [mimics g*n blasting]
The woman slumps forward
dead on the grave.
"All right, retrieve the
artifact and report back.
Good work, Agent Luckstone."
[Aabria gasps]
- Call me by my number.
- You see they say, "Good
luck, Double Eights."
As you walk through the graveyard
to go retrieve the artifact,
you see that the woman's wearing a cloak
and there are a bunch of scattered cookies
that have little heart candies in them
scattered over the grave,
but you know the artifact's
on her person somewhere.
As you kick it over,
you see a dead Penny
Luckstone on the ground,
her face frozen in a mask of horror.
And you see that there is a
giant headstone in front of her
with the words, here
lies some Mumple people.
- Ooh.
- Oh!
[suspenseful instrumental music]
- I start digging.
- You start digging.
This voice comes over your
surveillance again saying,
"Double Eight, not necessary.
The artifact's on the person.
Collect the artifact and return back."
- I take the thing out
of my ear and toss it.
- [laughs] You start digging.
You see the blood oozing
out and Penny, dead,
[gasps roughly] turns to you
as you're digging furiously.
You can feel yourself,
this little Halfling
digging a burrow in the earth.
You see it turns to you and goes,
"Come on, it's okay.
It's okay that you k*lled me.
We didn't want me to be alive.
Who wants to be a Mumple person?
Sitting here making cookies like an idiot.
Look at how cool you are!"
- I am really cool.
Do you know how hard it is to be an agent?
- "So hard, you did it!
[retches] All your dreams came true."
- It's not that...
I don't know what my dreams are.
- "Yeah, you do."
And you get down and
find a coffin down here in the dirt
and you can pry it open.
- I do so.
- You see 21 skeletons in the casket.
Amidst them you see all
of these clutched letters
written from you but anywhere
you wrote your name it's gone.
- I check all of them.
- One by one you check them all.
You hear a push of dirt
as Penny from up above
joins the bodies down here in the casket.
You have all these letters assembled here.
And you see Penny,
this other one covered in
blood, crisp little sweater.
You're dressed all in black so
you have b*ll*ts, bandoliers.
You see this Penny there covered in blood
joins everyone else and
says, "Why are you sad?"
- I thought this was what I wanted.
But no one knows how much I've done.
- [chuckles] "I do.
[tender instrumental music]
I know how hard it is to be this.
We know how hard everybody,"
and gestures with bloody hands
to the bones here, "how
hard everybody worked.
They love us.
So if we love them,
don't we have to make
their sacrifice matter?"
- That's what I always thought.
- If they loved us
enough to work this hard
so that we could be
anything we wanted to be,
we owe it to them to become everything
[gags] everything we can be.
And if that means that
we have to forget them
and they have to forget
us, then isn't that love?
[Brennan gagging]
- That doesn't feel like love.
I feel love when I was at
home and we were all together
around a little hearth
eating tiny sandwiches.
- Penny's face goes emaciated
and her eyes go hollow-
- Wait!
- And she says,
"So you just want to be
another f*cking Mumple person!"
- I don't want that either.
- "It's disgusting.
There's nothing in this world I hate more
than a f*cking Mumple
person," and you see that she-
- Give me the artifact!
- Cool, you reach forward,
reach into her chest,
pull out the artifact.
It's a glowing heart.
It's a glowing bloody heart.
Blood drips through your hands
and inside of the heart
you see a fractured mirror
in the reflection of the blood
in the heart glowing light.
You see a fractured mirror.
The mirror's broken
straight down the middle.
And you see in one half of
it there is a Penny Luckstone
going to Mumple surrounded by
or with a bunch of kids going to Mumple.
Penny's there with a
little Rube Goldberg house.
And in the other half is your reflection
of this agent person on either
half of this broken mirror.
- Does it kind of look
like Katja's necklace?
- It looks a lot like Katja's necklace.
And as that happens, you
realize that the edges
of the mirror expand out to the edges
of the heart you are holding.
The fracture runs right
down the middle and you hear
screaming from your cast-aside
surveillance up ahead,
"88, return the artifact!
Make your choice!"
What do you do?
- I crawl out of the grave.
And I crawl over to the earpiece.
And I take the half, halves in
each hand and I look at them.
One half is Mumple people
and one half is agent?
- [Brennan] Mm-hmm.
- I smash both of them into this earpiece
until all three shatter.
- [mimics glass shattering]
Your hands are bloody
and cut up to ribbons.
You shatter them apart.
And I'm actually gonna say that,
Antiope, you step out here.
You feel that this place is different.
Penny has torn up hands and is staring.
Your heart is shattered as you look up
and see Antiope emerging from time,
Ostentatia and Katja behind her.
You see that this Penny
is dead, skin paper white
and she is neither breathing
nor do you detect a pulse in her.
Even your ranger senses,
this Penny is dead.
- We were too late.
Penny?
- You can feel in your chest
that there is no heart beating.
Looking at the shattered
both halves in front of you
and the earpiece gone, does Penny
want a heart back?
- I think that the Penny is
in the grave wearing the cape,
and she crawls out and
collects her cookies
and gives them to her friends.
- [yelps] Jesus!
I kick the corpse.
What the f*ck is that?
Hey.
- Oh my God!
- You're so weird!
I love you!
- And in a great way, are these?
- I made these, they're
Candyheart cookies.
- I know, I want to save this for later.
I try to water it again.
- This weird undead Penny.
Oh my God, character switch, whoop!
Weird undead Penny turns to look at Penny
that's just crawled out of
the grave covered in blood
and says, "I k*lled you.
How are you still alive?"
- 'Cause when you got
friends, you can never die!
And then I take my
rapier and stab that one!
- And you both see that the two halves
of that fractured heart,
Penny's Luckstone's heart
glows with incredible light.
- Ooh!
- And we see an incredible secret agent,
sil*ncer, arquebus, bandolier, b*ll*ts
walking down the street with
a giant tray of cookies.
- Wild.
[Becca laughing]
- [Brennan] And all her family around her.
- We make a parade with just my family.
[group laughing]
- [Rekha] That family really
needs a break, it's a riot.
- 100%.
- Penny, you are covered
in blood and cookies.
Where to next?
- Uh, I think...
- What you gonna say?
- Yeah, what were you gonna say?
- What are we gonna say?
- [Becca And Rekha] Danielle!
- Sam!
Hold up, I want to like,
I jump in, hold on!
We have to get Zelda first.
I think she needs to see
whatever we're gonna see.
- Oh, great point.
- Is that okay?
- Is it so f*cked that I keep forgetting-
- [Becca] We knew she
was here the whole time.
[Erika laughs]
I totally forgot.
- [Rekha] I know it's f*cked,
I know it's f*cked up.
- Zelda, were you just standing there?
- Yeah, you guys move through time
and see Zelda absolutely
drenched with blood
with thousands of dead Zeldas
in a metal concert
with a bunch of Zeldas on stage
like. [growls metal music]
- She's like, "We gotta go, we should go,
we should really go."
- Yeah, come on.
- Wait, it seems like
you're headlining though.
- I don't like it here,
I figured out some stuff.
- Okay.
- I don't like it.
I super don't like it here!
- Wait, pick me up on your back.
Swing me around and I'll kick.
[Brennan growls]
[group laughing]
- And moves on out and you go to Danielle.
- Yeah.
- Danielle, you are...
[Aabria laughing]
- Uh-oh, uh-oh, b*tch.
- Uh-oh, b*tch.
- [Persephone] Someone's in the hot seat.
- You are moving through
the ruins of Bastion City,
brought low in ages long past
by the forces of nature itself.
Trees, thorns, vines.
And you walk through the forests
in the ruins of this place.
There's the Ministry,
there's Slappy McFinnigan's
destroyed by vines and roots.
And you arrive at the Museum of Questing.
The forests here are all dead.
Trees are dead and leafless, roots dead.
You feel no life here in this place.
And as you walk through
the reclaimed rubble,
Zelda's words from
before ring in your ears,
"I don't think she trusts any of us."
As you summit this area
and look into the museum
and see all of the rubble and waste,
you see a massive dracolich,
the bones of Kalvaxus.
"Well, Miss Barkstock,
it's a pleasure to see you."
- It's been a while.
- "Were you expecting to find yourself?"
- You know, I feel like
I have a pretty good handle on myself.
- "Yeah, I bet you do."
- That makes it sound
like you don't think I do.
- "Oh, I worked at a school
for a very long time.
A junior believing that
they have it all figured out
is not anything new to me."
- Point taken.
What did you teach?
- "I was the vice-principal."
- Oh, that makes so much sense, ugh.
- "Well, you have nothing to learn.
Welcome to paradise."
And you see he returns and
just sort of goes back to sleep
and you hear wind blowing.
[wind rushing]
- I cast Speak with Plants.
[magic reverberations echo]
- Plants kick up.
Do you also have the
spell Speak with Dead?
- No.
- Then you can't speak with plants.
As you attempt to cast it, though,
you do hear a voice on the wind
speaking back to you.
"Is there anything you wish to ask them?"
- How can I build a future that's
sustainable for everyone?
How can I do it?
I'm just one person.
A person with a human and elf body.
I only have so much power, and it's a lot,
but it's still not enough to, you know,
sort of revisit a whole capitalist economy
and power structure and
destabilize the status quo
and make all my friends happy.
- Your arm falls off.
[bone cracks]
[flesh splats on ground]
[Erika sighs]
The Draconic head looks up and says,
"In the grand scheme of
things, an arm falling off
is not that big of an issue."
- It's really not.
- Your other arm falls off.
- [groans] Tendrils of mushroom mycelia
grow out of her body.
They move their tendrils up
to make a little peace sign.
[Aabria and Becca laughing]
Did you know, Mr. Kalvaxus,
sir, Professor Kalvaxus, sir,
that mushroom, when they grow
out their root structures
work to enrich the soil for
the trees that shelter them.
One of the primary purposes
other than doing how mushrooms
do is to enrich the soil
and to support the other life around them.
- "Mm, yeah, and you're a mushroom."
Your legs root to the ground.
- Mm...
- "That's a good aspiration
for a young woman.
You want to be a mushroom,
nice, very good."
- Well, it's better than
being a shitty dragon
who was a vice-principal.
- [Brennan] "Oh."
- No offense to vice-principals.
- "By all means, if you want
to hurt my feelings, go for it,
but that doesn't change the fact
that your greatest aspiration for yourself
is to not exist anymore."
And your torso turns into plant matter.
It's just your head on a stump.
"I mean, Danielle doesn't
get a story, right?
You're just an ecosystem.
You're just here to enrich the soil
so why don't you start enriching it?
You don't want anything.
Or maybe you do but you
don't think the world
can provide it to you, certainly
not your stupid friends.
What could they do?
You're there to support them.
Oh look, you make fruit."
And you see he takes a
little thing and says,
"Very generous, Miss Barkstock." [slurps]
[Becca yelps]
[Rekha groans softly]
- I'm not afraid of giving everything up
and having nothing left for myself,
imperious like you that just
take and take and take and take
and giving myself, everything
is still not gonna be enough.
I just hope that, you know,
maybe my friends might remember me
while they continue to fight
for what's good and right.
- "Well, Miss Barkstock,
welcome to nobility, very selfless."
And you turn into this fungal plant mass
and feel yourself being devoured.
Mites and grubs move on you
and this sort of fungal form grows.
Strange budding spores.
Yeah, you feel the ability
to bring some semblance
of life to this place.
Danielle would have to go away.
But if you want, you could
bring some life to this place.
[soft instrumental music]
- Danielle calls the rain.
[rain pouring]
[thunder rumbles]
And the rain comes.
It washes to little cracks in the soil,
little crevices of stone.
And the water nourishes the root system.
And the root system takes hold.
It creeps into every inch
of the soil in the surrounding area,
first just the exhibit with
Kalvaxus then the museum
then the whole town until all of Bastion,
the mighty network of roots
digesting the decay,
bringing about new life,
cracking and crumbling
the remnants of pavement
and the stones and pieces of metal
as it slowly goes back to the earth.
[soft instrumental music]
- You feel this ecosystem
move upon itself.
And I'm gonna say at this
moment that your friends arrive.
You arrive in this new place.
The rain has come in, life
has returned to this place.
It's flowering and blooming.
- They walk through to the museum exhibit
and they see two little diamond earrings
in the Kalvaxus exhibit.
- Kalvaxus is there covered
with moss and lilies and sh*t
and he says, "Very humble
beginning to a hoard."
- Dragon!
[group laughing]
- You take the dragon slayer arrows.
[Brennan mimics bowstring twanging]
[screams] Skull shatters, crumbles.
- Anyway, where's Danielle?
- Yeah, where is she?
- You see there is this beautiful tree
right near where the earrings were.
And it's both plant and fungus intertwined
and there's buzzing insects in it.
You see it's near where the arrows were,
and it has a wreath of
flowers in its branches
that looks like flowers and
fungus and blooming things.
- I pull out my dagger
and I look to you guys.
- What, are you gonna stab the tree?
- Do we get her out?
Is she in there?
- Is she in the tree or is she the tree?
- Can I cast Primeval Awareness
to see if I can sense my friend?
- The only thing you're
aware of is Danielle.
She is the primeval right now.
- That was a bad idea.
Don't k*ll the tree, maybe.
- Okay.
- Danielle, are you the tree?
- Wait.
- Kick it.
- Let's put our hands
on it and kinda like...
- I aim for what I think is not her chest.
[Erika laughs]
- I want to like, be
part of the tree, too.
- Zelda doesn't put her hands on the tree.
- Zelda...
- Hm...
Zelda.
- Zelda, we need you.
- We gotta do it.
- Danielle's in here, she needs you.
- She lowers her head, walks up,
and puts her hands on the bark.
- Okay, hold on, you're
not gonna put it on grumpy.
- Yeah, no, not like that.
- What the f*ck do you want to say?
- "Danielle, are you around here?"
- The wind whispers through
the wooly branches of the tree.
A little mushroom spore goes
and a little bee flying by
is like [mimics air puffing]
and its eyeballs completely dilate.
- That's hot as hell.
- Yeah, I don't know.
I feel like I'm not...
[sighs] You see she sighs and
looks up at you and just goes,
"I wish you would have trusted us.
I wish you would have...
[tender music]
I wish you would have felt
like you could let your guard down.
I wish you would have felt like
you could say how you felt.
I wish you could have said
when you were hurting.
I wish you could have
said what you wanted.
I wish you could have been
with us and not beside us
and under us and over us
supporting or explaining
or understanding or being
there but not being with.
I wish you could have seen how much
we wanted to take care of you."
- Lightning strikes the tree.
[thunder crashes]
It falls.
Roots and moss, lichen and
mushrooms grow up over it
into a mound and you can see
this all as if in time lapse.
And just as soon as it has fallen
and been reclaimed into the earth
it reforms and Danielle is there.
[players gasp]
Maybe sometimes self-care
is helpful for supporting others.
[Brennan sputter laughs]
- Nope, nope, nope.
- You're so close.
- Really close.
- You were so close.
- Really close, not about us.
- Not about that, one more time.
- I like being a pretty princess.
[players cheering]
[players clapping]
- We lift her up.
- And I put her arms back on her.
- You lift her up, amazing.
You move from this space.
- Sam.
- You are at the funeral
of Sam Nightingale in a pew
in the back of a temple
filled with adoring fans.
You see your body laid out in the casket
at the head of the congregation,
and a veiled figure
steps up to the lectern.
Removing her veil is Penelope Everpetal.
[players gasp]
And you hear the loud performative sobs
of your mother from the front row.
"Dearly beloved, we are
gathered here to mourn
a soul departed from this world too soon.
Nobody was better friends with Sam-
- I cast Infestation.
[player cheers]
- Boom, pow, that spell goes out
and is Counterspelled by a corpse.
Sam Nightingale leaps
from her casket. [roars]
Lunges forward and grasps you and shatters
through mirror after mirror
after mirror after mirror
and goes, "Why couldn't you play nice?
Why couldn't you get with the program?
Don't you understand that they loved us?"
- No, they didn't, they never have!
- Sam looks up at you and you see the
mortuary makeup
and can smell the preservative
and can feel that this body died
horrifically
and has been put together
again to keep up appearances.
And goes, "Listen to me.
I'm not gonna let you ruin this."
- Ruin what?
There's nothing back there.
None of that matters.
- "Sam, you're smart.
Figure out the constant.
Wherever you go, people leave.
Where is Mom?
Where is Penelope?
Where is that non-f*ck Johnny?
Where's your home?
Where's Gideon and Rebecca?
These are all very different people.
The constant is us."
- So people leave.
That doesn't mean that
I can stop existing.
It doesn't mean that I
want whatever that is.
- Sam looks at you and says, "Okay, okay.
So we need people to stick around.
That's what we need.
We need people to love us.
We just need people to love us."
And mirrors start to appear around you
and you hear applause.
[crowd applauding]
[players clapping]
Presenting Sam Nightingale
returning to the stage.
Folks, give it up.
[mimics crowd applauding] A roar.
And boy, does that roar
feel a lot like love.
- [Rekha] Hmm...
- Is this what you want?
Is this what we want?
- This could keep us alive.
- Everyone does leave.
This is one thing we
could rely on, isn't it?
- We could rely on this,
we could rely on this.
- Sam goes up to one of
the mirrors and touches it.
[suspenseful instrumental music]
[Brennan mimics wind whooshing]
- Beautiful image swirls past.
You feel some sense
that you could control
what this mirror sees.
You see you looking glorious
talking to some talk show
host in Bastion City.
Everyone's laughing at
something you've said.
It moves past, nice things,
Sebastian at the fleet,
at the head of a fleet of
cars in a massive garage.
- I thought he was driving.
- You see all of these things
which very few people
are talented enough or
gifted enough to get.
You could get them.
- Even if I want these things,
I don't want it at the
expense of what I really want.
- What is it you really want?
- To be loved and cared for.
- You say that with a
hand left on the mirror
and you see a ratty,
old sofa, and on it is,
wearing sweats, having just
cried off a bunch of makeup
is Rebecca Everpetal.
- Aw.
- And you see her talking to her sister.
They have some music on in the background.
Her sister's apartment is not that great,
but she has a glass of
box wine and she's crying.
And she goes, "She's just,
she's just so special
and she's been through
so much and for a kid
to get knocked around that much by life
and in a moment like
that where everything's
been thrown up in the air for her again,
the first thing she
does is reach out to me.
Oh, she's a special, special kid.
She's going places, I know
she is. [exhales loudly]
[slurps] Ah, do you have more of this?
This is great."
- Oh, that can't be good.
- [laughs] And you see,
her sister gets up and goes to the kitchen
and she looks up and says,
"I just hope...
[soft instrumental music]
You know, we make up stories, you know?
And it doesn't take too many
times for a thing to happen
for us to go, that's never gonna stop.
And Sam has got more than her fair share,
and I just hope she knows that even though
she's gotten the same bad
cards a few times in a row
that that better hand is
coming just around the corner."
And faces begin to appear in the mirror.
At the very front of
it, racing through time
faster than an arrow is Antiope
with a chain of the
other maidens behind her
stretching through time and
space coming towards you.
[soft instrumental music]
[mimics mirror shattering]
Hands grasp in time and space.
- I love you, too.
- It's time to go.
- I give one glance back
through the shattered mirrors
at the funeral home and look at Penelope.
[Brennan inhales raspily]
I don't love you anymore.
[Brennan mimics mirror shattering]
- Like an arrow, you are
all in this long chain.
Antiope you're like, flying through time.
You have the Seven Maidens with you.
You are all moving through time and space.
That last thing you say,
Sam, echoes behind you
and all of you are free.
Time and death you begin to leave behind.
Everybody dies and in some
ways there are many deaths
of things other than our
material form through time.
And in this space you have said goodbye
to many things that were
than can never be fixed
and said goodbye to many
things that could be
that now never will.
Moving through time, a
face appears before you
as you hear in the distance
the racking, screaming sobs
of Talura, Eidolon of death.
You see ahead of you fire and earth magma
crashing up
as Chronoa slips past you,
being pulled towards Talura,
and a face flickers as you
can see twisting helixes
of magic, Solesian magic,
some powerful arcano-tech.
[mimics energy sh**ting] And a
crystal, the mirror is hacked
in your friendship bracelet.
- [gasps] Oh no!
- And you see the face of Charity Blythe.
- [Becca] b*tch!
- Wearing battle armor,
almost like f*cking
cloaked plate armor going,
"You know, at their core I've always felt
that heroes and villains
were quite similar.
They both enjoy the sound of
innocent people screaming,
just for different reasons."
- I cast Infestation through the mirror.
- [laughs] "Bugs, I hate bugs!"
You see she says, "Oh, you're
so much better than me?
Your own little Project Reset here
seems to be going quite well.
Or did you not want to make
some problems to solve?"
- We wanted a quest!
We didn't make problems to make a quest.
- You could have done like,
a written f*cking test for the G-E-D.
Like, you know, that's on you.
- What's the G-E-D?
- Sorry, GED.
- GED, otherwise known as GED.
- GED, GED.
- You see she looks at you and says,
[sighs] "Very well, I had hoped that time
would have sorted you out,
but it seems I'll take
matters into my own hands."
- Well, time definitely
didn't sort out your face,
you wrinkly bull b*tch.
- Ooh!
- I hate teenagers!
And you see-
- Botox can't help you anymore!
- I'm gonna need everyone
here to roll initiative!
- Yeah!
[players cheering]
- That's all for this
episode of "Dimension 20."
Tune in next week for
the thrilling finale!
Oh my God, I didn't even
know you could trip a snake.
- You can trip anything.
- We'd follow you into hell itself.
- We've done that!
- There is piss in my pants.
[Rekha screams]
- I knew the Earth loved horses!
- Is there a doctor
here, is there a doctor?
I need to commit to trying to sh*t
or barf the owl out right now!
- Oh no, I said my mom, not the
b*tch that gave birth to me.
- Gotcha.
- Respect.
[group laughing]
- And Ostentatia passes away.
- My name is Antiope Jones,
and you tell everyone
that The Seven did this.
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11x09 - Time & Space
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A tabletop role-playing game show produced by and broadcast on Dropout and created and generally hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan as the show's regular Dungeon Master.
A tabletop role-playing game show produced by and broadcast on Dropout and created and generally hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan as the show's regular Dungeon Master.